Second hard drive keeps vanishing (Read 710 times)

[thewookster]

Hey folks,

I have 2 hard drives on my desktop, one for the OS (win 7 64 Pro) and for general day to day stuff like games etc etc and the second for storing all my work crap.

After turning on the computer the hard drive is there, then after about an hour or so I go to load up a document and the hard drive has vanished.  Checked to see if it is there in system management but nothing.

Pulled the cables out and even changed them and swapped the power cable and it works for roughly the same amount of time. 

The hard drive itself seems to be fine because I put it into a caddy and is working via the USB had it plugged in all night last night to check and was still there this morning.

The hard drive is being recognised in bios, and also after the initial splash screen I get a list of the hard drives and is also shown there.

Any ideas?

[slipjizzyswift]

I had a similar problem about a year ago, turned out to be bad sectors and the drive would just fail randomly, I formatted it several times but the problem persisted so I had to send it back - luckily it was under warranty still.

I would suggest doing this to get a better picture of the situation

windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-vista/check-your-hard-disk-for-errors

[thewookster]

yea it's just weird.

Going to just copy everything via the usb enclosure, put all data on new hard drive then get the hammer out to the old hard drive \o/

[thewookster]

Problem fixed.....

The Solution.

A Sledge Hammer.

Only lost 2 weeks worth of work (not a lot really) as my hard drives backup every month or so.  Plus I have them stored on paper so will just scan them I guess.

But it felt good smashing the crap out of the hard drive.

Won't mess with me now will you mwah ha ha ha

Wook 1:0 Hard drive

[swampy]

[Marcer]

Did you jsut smash ur HDD into pieces?

Anyways, a  few things to consider for any of you who keep getting such weird things with their HDDs. If the HDD keeps vanishing it might be due to several reasons.

If you use 2,5" HDD it should be noted that they use direct current from USB port. So you must connect it to a powered port in your PC (such ports are usually specially designated by a manufacturer) otherwise it won't work. If it keeps disappearing it means that the USB port or HDD controller in the disk enclosure is malfunctioning. Try to reconnect to other port to see if the issue persists. It might also be a damaged logical/physical structure of the disk. Use HDDScan or other disk monitoring software to determine whether there are any bad sectors on the drive and whether the SMART parameters are all in acceptable fields.
Usually the front/upside chassis USB ports on a standard ATX enclosure should be NOT used to connect HDDs, but only pendrives.

If you use externally powered 3,5" HDD you can scratch the USB power issue from the above statements, but the rest remains basically the same.

If a device disappears from the system, it means that it is either physically unavailable (even though it might sound illogical, as it is very clearly connected thru the USB wire) for the system or there are no drivers for it as the hardware abstraction layer does not see it - but usually in the latter case the system will still report a device of unknown origin so yes, if it is working it will be shown in the system even if the system does not "know" what it is due to the lack of drivers. If it has periods of time when it is working well and then suddenly disappears it means almost exclusively a hardware failure.

You could've moved your hdd to another enclosure using different controller or simply connect it thru SATA (if you have a desktop PC) or USB-SATA connector (if you have a laptop). Barring a HDD failure (faulty onbaord electronics, irrecoverable physical damage to the platters) you should've been able to get the data. Even if the partitions were lost they could be recovered as long as the disk is not written into.

Source: I'm an IT engineer so I have to know this horrifying HDD porn stuff.

[thewookster]

lolol

It was a 3.5 connected via the sata cables and sata power source via the PSU inside.

It was only used to save my work stuff so it didn't get lost amongst the crazy stuff I have accumulated on the main HDD.

When I put the faulty HDD into the USB enclosure to try and copy all my files it would only stay visible for something like 5 mins or so.

I thought it stayed because I left it plugged in overnight, but when I tried to move some files it would just fail with some crap about searching for file/s (can't remember the full text which was said)  then I just saw red.  Ripped the hard drive out of the enclosure, went to the shed, grabbed the sledge hammer and kept hitting it until I was knackered

HDD is no more.  Good riddance

On another note, i'm in the process of acquiring parts to build a new PC now so not much longer to last with this one as I think the MOBO is on it's last legs and it needs upgrading so have saved some pennies over the past few months so going to build something that should be quite nice. 

Nothing crazy, just a nice little quick system.  I'm not as insane as some of the people on irc are spending thousands of £££ or $$$ or €€€ which I think is just complete crazyness.  Plus I am a penny pincher if I can save money then I will

[Marcer]

Does your motherboard have classic cylinder capacitors like this one?
www.capacitorlab.com/capacitor-types-electrolytic/rubycon-mcz-capacitors.jpg
If so, does the top of any of them seem curved, not flat?
If any of them has its top curved, it means that it is faulty. Replace the motherboard.

If you have modern solid state capacitors you can skip my question.

If you want to build a new system stay with Sandy Bridge or Ivy bridge if you can snatch it in the price bracket comparable to the SB. Also stay in teh core i5 range unless you do hardcore CAD computing or very hard core gaming.

As to the GPU, its more of a personal preference as most graphics cards nowadays that are in a certain price range offer almost the same performance. Remember that even though ATi has quite good bang-to-buck ratio many games still offer MORE support for nVidia GPUs although that tendency is slowy waning.

Also think about upgrading to Windows 64 bit if you havent already - the memory cap will be gone, and many modern games allow for extensive usage of 64bit architecture. Not to mention modern engineering tools.

Do not buy Windows 8. It is useless, Microsoft even pulled off any support for it even faster than for Vista. Ballmer officially claimed it to be a failure and the sales are way behind. Stay with Windows 7 64 bit, an extremely reliable Windows system.

If you want a VERY snappy computer, use SSD or SSD + HDD combo. Stay away from HDD hybrid drives - they're not faster than standard HDDs with big cache (64m) and can be pricier.

Generally you can build a VERY decent set for small money (small is relative lol).

[thewookster]

Well the bottom 3 USB slots at the back of comp have stopped working (soldered to mobo not card).  Tried uninstalling but still no joy.  Windows recognises them at working but nothing works with them.

I'm not going to bother with SSD at this time.  Can always just clone my hard drive in the future if I want to upgrade.

I have win 7 64 on this computer will just migrate the product key of this version over to the new computer.  Done it before lolol

I will be going for a good processor and a lot of RAM because I will start streaming stuff after xmas.  Have ordered my RAM am going for 32gb I got a 50% discount at the store I am using so managed to get it for £165 'Corsair DDR3 1866MHz 4 x 8gb'

Once I have decided what I will be doing I will post specs and stuff then you can criticise or say well done wookiee

[terrorj]

I took a quadcore pcu when I builded my pc last year,got 4 slots for the 32 mb ram but never used it.
Got 1 slot filled with 4mb now,more then enouch.
But the most awesome I build in my cd writer last weekend
It burns on 2 sides,so i can burn a picture and stuf on the top.

[thewookster]

Nice

I need a lot of RAM and CPU so I can start streaming some drunk action and some matches.

Will start a drunk twitch channel once I have everything working.  The will pester the heck out of kryty and nitrogen to help me get things looking nice

[swampy]

I was bored..or drunk quite awhile ago..heh.. We do have a Twitch channel..Lemme track it down..and I'll PM the log/ P/W to you wooks..

[thewookster]

o0kie doke.

Won't need it until after xmas anyways

[swampy]

xmas? be very very afraid of this years theme...

[thewookster]

hehehehehe