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#1
Secondary HDD turns itself off randomly
Win 7 Ultimate on Dell XPS8300
I have an SSD as my System Disk C:, but retained the original HDD (plugged to its original slot) as a secondary internal drive for Temp folders, backups, music files etc. It is still a bootable drive, although the boot sequence puts the SSD first. The HDD is a Seagate.
This arrangement worked OK until quite recently, until the HDD started turning itself off at random, but usually within a half-hour slot in the mid-afternoon, after the machine has been on since about 7 a.m. This happens perhaps every fifth day, and has forced me to move my pagefile back to C: SSD from the HDD.
So far, I have done these:-
- checked the HDD with the Dell Hardware testing utilities, with the Crucial Storage Executive (which also reports on the HDD) and several other things. None of these report any problems with the HDD.
- run the full Chkdsk (Fix/Scan for bad..)a couple of times, and Fix only several more. A few file problems corrected.
- ensured that Power Management Never turns off the HDD
- checked the SATA cable connection, which seems OK
As far as I can see, the only remaining options for me are to:-
- replace the SATA cable
and/or
- replace the drive (which seems unwarranted as no errors are reported on it)
or
- reformat the drive completely and see where that goes
Because the disk drops offline at a particular time, I'm wondering whether heat build-up may affect a connection in the cabling; although the ambient temperature in my office the last time this happened was pretty darn cold.
I realise this topic has been aired previously, but I cannot see any answers which may pertain to my own circumstances. I'd therefore welcome any hints, suggestions or other help.
Thanks.