Strange Samsung F3 problem...

[Johnny Girth]

Hello chaps

People kindly helped out with my HD troubles before where the drive seemed to be clicking a lot and dying (I updated the firmware to the latest version).

However, the drive (Samsung F3 1TB) seems to be struggling again.

After about 30-60 mins of use Windows fails to recognise the hard drive any more. If I reboot then Windows will hang and I have to hard shut down the PC and disconnect the drive in question, after which point Windows boots fine.

The strange thing is that after that successful boot I can shut down and reconnect the HD and then it's back working again in Windows - only to run into the same disappearing problem in a similar time frame.

I suspect the drive is on its way out although it's strange that it comes back to life after performing the above steps.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Edit:

Specs = Windows 7 Ultimate, Core i5 2500k @ 4.5ghz, 8GB ram, Asus P8P67, SSD main drive (64GB C300), 2TB storage drive and 1TB Samsung F3. PSU = 550W Enermax

 

[Justintime]

Checked connections? Had a similar problem here last week and it turned out to be a duff SATA cable, reproduced the same errors with another drive with that cable to confirm. Does event viewer list any disk errors?

 

[Johnny Girth]

Hi
I haven't tried changing the cable - will do that now and see if it helps.

I notice that the event viewer has loads of disk errors. There are lots of "event ID 11" errors relating to a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort3.

Also lots of "event ID 15" errors where \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 is not ready for access yet.

Will try a different cable and SATA port and see if that works...