Disappearing Hard Drive

[pawz7]

Recently a 500GB SATA drive, which had behaved perfectly in two years of constant use, and on which I kept my Steam games folder, started to disappear from My Computer and from Disk Manager. Sometimes Disk Manager could bring it back on 'rescan drives', but sometimes not, so I bought another 500GB drive, put it in about a week ago, installed everything back on there, including the Steam folder..... and now it is happening AGAIN. Has anyone else had this problem or have any ideas please? Disk Manager brought it back as a blank drive last time I looked.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Have you tried booting into the BIOS, and seeing if the hard drive(s) is/are listed?

 

[pawz7]

Yes, but, with respect, I don't think that is the area of problem. I am thinking controllers, but reinstalling the chipset has not helped. I notice that the drive disappears if I am using the dvd drive. That may be a clue, but have to leave it for now as early start tomorrow. Thank you for your help -appreciated.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Update your System Specifications with Speccy, and then copy this information into your System Specifications: Go to your UserCP, and then select Edit System Spec in the left pane. Copy the information from Speccy into the required fields. These System Specifications will then follow your every post.

Although, your not experiencing BSODs, the SF_Diagnostic Tool will help you upload some useful files for troubleshooting purposes - http://www.sevenforums.com/bsod-help-support/96879-blue-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

 

[pawz7]

Will follow up on this a bit later BlueRobot - got Speccy on the 32 bit, need it for the 64 bit, so will download another copy on that. Bit like SIW is it? Thanks. Couple of other things I am going to try first, to see what happens.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Okay thanks, and 32-bit programs will run 64-bit operating systems.

 

[pawz7]

Mornin all and BR in particular. Sorry I did not get back here yesterday. I have a copy of Speccy on the 64bit now. Neat. ( I started my computer adventures with 'Speccies'!) I shall add that to my tools drive. I am hoping ( time will tell) that the problem with the disappearing HDD might have been resolved. It behaved properly yesterday, from afternoon to bed-time.

All I have done is re-install the original chipset driver from the disk, following a 'hunch' ( repairing other folks boxes for many years seems to develop a 'hint-system' in one's thinking - you will know what I mean). I have also set Windows Updates to download and allow me to install, which I had forgotten to set after the re-install a couple of months back.

Anyway, fingers crossed. If not, I'll be baa-ack!

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If using the optical drive cause the HDD to go bye-bye, it may be a power issue. Are the HDD and optical drive on the same PSU cable? If so, what else is on the same cable?

 

[pawz7]

That was going to be my next port of call Lady F - and may yet be. The machine ( which I 'built' if you can call it that these days) has not shown any problems power-wise or any other-wise, until this recent hiatus, and the only hardware change since assembly has been the swapping of the HDD when this problem first appeared and a new ( several months ago) optical drive, because the previous one never did work as well as it ought ( clue?) - but PSU's do degrade slowly, so that too was on the list, but for now I will wait and see how things go. The optical drive seems to work fine with other disks, but I was hearing a small 'tweet' yesterday when it was trying to work with the disk I put in ( and failed). Maybe the disk I put in was too old - though it was spinning up fine on the 32 bit when I tried it there.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Tell us how everything goes, and have you tried using a different cable?

 

[pawz7]

not yet tried a diff cable, but will do if it goes pear-shaped again - and will post back here to give update if so.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Okay thanks

 

[pawz7]

So far, so good, so a dud cable seems less likely - but I will play around and see what happens that might change the situation.Going to post on another puzzle now - not related I hope.

 

[x BlueRobot]

That's good to know

 

[pawz7]

Hello again ( if you are still watching this thread). I got two more 'disappears' yesterday, both times a rescan on Disk Manager got it back, but I was unsettled again, so downloaded and ran SpeedFan, SeaGates Disk tool, a maintenance test using Spinrite, consulted Speccy and the Intel Desktop util for this mobo - all of which kept me from my bed for rather longer than a lady of my years usually expects. Apart from the Intel tool piping up once on a voltage thing being slightly out of range ( yellow, not red), everything seemed hunky-dory, but I still could hear a strange little 'tweet' coming from the box, which I thought might be hard drive, though it didn't sound quite right for that, so I decided that today I would open 'er up, get the heatsink out and give it a good blow through with canned air, put some more cooling gunk on the processor, and YES! swap the SATA data cables about. So... did all that, put it all back together and fired it up and.... no more tweets and ( so far) no more disappearings. Hooray! I hope.

 

[x BlueRobot]

That's great, if it disappears again, then I'll post the voltages for the 3.3V, 5V and 12V rails from the BIOS

 

[pawz7]

'kay, ta.