D: Drive disappearing after an hour past bootup.

Hi,

So I've been having this problem consistently and simply cannot understand what's wrong with my system.

Problem Description:
I boot up my PC, everything works fine, after an hour or so, my D (Secondary internal drive) disappears and the system has to be rebooted to find it again. Note, this happens whether or not the drive is currently being used.

Note: The drive always appears in the BIOS.

Drive: Seagate Barricuda 7200.11 750GB
Serial number: 9QK1GAKJ
Disk model: ST3750330AS

Steps I've taken to try and solve the problem:

• Initially I thought the drive was simply being unmounted, so i attempted to mount it again using disk management. However the drive won't appear there either, nor will it appear in system information or Seatools. A disk rescan won't reveal it either.
• I later, tried to use SeaTools to find out whether or not there was something physically wrong with the drive, but the drive passed all the tests. Peculiarly enough, when the D: drive disappears it also disappears in Seatools.
• Thirdly, I checked my power settings to make sure i hadn't had some timer for the hard drive to shut off.
• Fourthly, I checked the bios settings to make sure there wasn't some sort of power policy conflict there as-well.
• Lastly, I scanned the disk for errors with the windows (with both options to recover bad sectors and fix errors checked) and rebooted. (The problem still occurs)

I will be trying to turn off the bios's plug and play settings next, and see if it will work better if i should let windows handle the device detection.

However, in case that doesn't work, I'd appreciate any suggestions.

You could try connecting it to another internal SATA port. What model computer?
Have you tried another cable?

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Its a custom built PC, so i don't it doesn't have a model number.

I ran another checkdsk this time with /B flag, and it seems to be fine for now, will try another sata port if it's still acting up.

The data on the drive isn't too important, it's just a few films/things i don't mind losing. I'm just worried about the drive itself.

Hi akumaburn. Welcome. :)

You could try a different data (and power) cable.

And just as a wild guess, it could be a controller issue on the HD itself...once it heats up, it goes offline. One suggestion that hasn't been mentioned: Try the drive in a different machine to see what happens. If it 'disappears' on the different machine, you know the probelm is in the drive, in which case you could shop for a good price on a controller. They're pretty simple to change, and you don't have to fool with the platters or take the mechanical portion of the drive apart.



James

Okay, what model motherboard?

Motherboard and everything are in my system specs, but since I ran chkdsk /B it hasn't disappeared yet.