Strange HDD Issue

alphaomega16

alphaomega16

alphaomega16

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Joined
4 Jul 2006
Posts
2,349
Heya chaps, in the past couple of weeks ive had this happen twice one of my HDD just vanishes from my computer.

The first time it happened I restarted and it popped up again no problem and has been working fine since, HD Sentinel also shows no issues.

Then last night it must have happened again as I had an Autoplay window for the same drive that dropped off before only this time it must have showed back up.

Is this typical behavior of a failing drive or dodgy lead ?
 
Sounds like it could be a bad connection or cable. If not, then perhaps something on the harddrive's PCB is overheating.

If you put the drive into another computer, does the harddrive keep disappearing? If so, are you using the same SATA or power cable from the original computer? If so, try different cables.

What is the harddrives temperature?
 
Hard drives never go above 40c, they usually bounce between 35 and 39.

If it sounds more like a bad connection ill just open my case and remove / re-insert the cables and if it happens again I will just buy a new SATA Cable and slap it in.

Its hard to test in another computer because its random when it happens, couple of times in 1-2 weeks.

According to HD Sentinel the highest temp that drive has ever seen is 44c and that was over a year ago.

Edit
Right, I have gone through event viewer and found this.

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort4.

Edit 2
Apparently the last time it happened was the 22nd of this month, I thought it was longer than that.

I sorted by event and the 22nd and last night are the only times its happened so far.
 
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Just an update, it vanished again today and this time wouldnt come back and when restarting system with my SSD drive as the OS drive the windows logo was still showing after about 5 minutes then it went through an error check.

Said something was wrong but not 100% sure what it actually said but I did get the following.

Event #197 Reported by HD Sentinel and WD own tool said

Western Digital Status Code 07

Seems to be working fine through USB but that could just be temporary but all my data is backed up to an old 1TB drive which was then backed up to my second 1TB drive (Had 2 laying around since I upgraded my 2x1tb's to 2x4tb's (1 for main data, second for backup)

I think the drive has finally bit the dust.

According to HD Sentinel it has been running for 5.24 Years and my machine has been on pretty much 24/7 with heavy writes to it over the years im talking some serious terabytes (It was used as a kind of hub drive to sort things out / download / convert video) so I am surprised it lasted this long.

It was a WD Caviar Black Drive.

I purchased 2x640GB drives at the same time and the other one is still going ok, all the data will be backed up just incase and I am in the process of re-organizing the information stored on it for proper consolidation (Consolidate the data from the 2x640GB to the 1x1TB) and the amount of crap I didnt need was unbelievable lol.

The warranty on this drive ended 4 months ago lol, damn timing hehehe.
 
Did you try a different cable? I had a problem with drives going missing quite a bit, I was adamant that the drives were about to go, but it actually turned out to be a faulty power cable. Some of my drives were more susceptible to to disappearing than others, which is what made me think it was the drives at first.
 
Yep, tried a different cable.

It was registering a bad sector after it ran the chkdsk when it was having problems reading the drive and the WD tool wouldnt pass teh SMART test, came up with error that points to bad sectors.

Here is an image of the bottom of hte HDD and I have circled a mark that seems to be a short by what seems to be a burn mark.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/alphaomega16/20140827_041101_zpsd69af371.jpg~original

Couldnt embedd it, it was too big.
 
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Seems like its happening still, same SATA port but different hard drive and different SATA cables, I am starting to think the port is faulty.

Switched it with the DVD drive now, will see how I get on.

I did get a couple of new messages though

The system failed to flush data to the transaction log. Corruption may occur.

and

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk3\DR3 during a paging operation.

on top of the default

The device, \Device\Harddisk3\DR3, is not ready for access yet.

and

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort4.

All referencing the same port on the motherboard.
 
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