Hard drive keeps disappearing

[jnelsoninjax]

I keep having this persistent issue with one of my HDD's, it's a WD 1TB green drive, and it just seems to randomly disappear, the only way I can restore the drive is to unplug the power from the drive and then plug it back in, sometimes I have to unplug the sata cable to get it to show back up. There are not any SMART errors, or any other things that would help me identify where the issue is. Any help on this situation would be appreciated.

[n_K]

Didn't we tell you before to get it RMA'd or get a new logic board for it?

[jnelsoninjax]

^Different drive... but I can not RMA it unless I can generate fail codes, and it is not failing, at least according to WDDIAG...

[canadian]

I've RMAd drives with WD without fail codes. just go to their site and enter the serial and tell them it is dead - after all until you pull the power it really is dead. they'll send you a refurb and you're on your way.

[jnelsoninjax]

^Good point! I hadn't thought about it like that before! I'll do that, I would like to know is it the drive itself, or is it something in my system that could be causing this issue?

[ron963]

I go through this with Dell all the time where they say I need to provide the error code first. If you know that your hard drive is going bad (which they do), make sure you backup first. If you're under the warranty just get it replaced. Use error code 107 and go on from there. Sometimes it costs more to reseach and test and there are times where you just need it solved right away and not get too much involved with the "follow the guide book techs."

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/errorcodes.asp

[Detection]

^Different drive... but I can not RMA it unless I can generate fail codes, and it is not failing, at least according to WDDIAG...

Drop it while its spinning... RMA problem solved

I guess you have tried different ports, cables etc ?

Tried the drive in a different machine ?

Open Event Viewer, > Windows Logs > System

See if there are any entries showing what it going on around the time it disappears, maybe a driver conflict ?

[n_K]

Drop it while its spinning... RMA problem solved

Dumbest idea ever, if you read warranties you'll find it covers shock up to 3GS or something which explicity excludes include user's problems causing the problems, and it's easy to see if the drive's been dropped from the huge mark it'd leave on the platters.

[jnelsoninjax]

Take a look at this:

Why does this program report that 2 of the drives are IDE, when they are not? Everything in this system is SATA.

[n_K]

They're seagate drives, could mean they're operating under IDE mode (via bios or actual drive interface) or just that a competing company won't pick them up properly (seagate drives on western digital software...)

[Captain Caveman]

Like Detection asked.. have you tried it in a different SATA port?

My motherboard has an issue with 1 port and thats exactly the same thing that was happening to me a few years ago and still does if I plug anything into that port.. the drive will disapear over time..

[jnelsoninjax]

I just changed the SATA cable out, will give it some time and see what happens.

[mduren2445]

If you have access to another machine I would test it there too just in case motherbrd (i/o controller) is trying to tell you something good luck

[Eric Veteran]

I just changed the SATA cable out, will give it some time and see what happens.

I've had problems with drives before that turned out to be a bad cable. It generally turns out the cables that don't have a metal latch on them end up getting loose after a while. And, yes, it makes the drive drop out of the device manager due to errors. :/

I hope that works for you!

[philcruicks]

I had an issue like this once....Turned out to be the PSU...it was several years and and wasn't supplying enough power so drive kept disappearing.

[jnelsoninjax]

Well the cable does not have the metal clip on it (I hated those kind!), but Western Digital's Data Lifeguard program is showing this message when I attempt to test the drive is question:

Does this just confirm that the drive is bad? However it does show nothing abnormal in SMART status...

[n_K]

Yes, get it RMA'd!

[the big dill]

Dumbest idea ever, if you read warranties you'll find it covers shock up to 3GS or something which explicity excludes include user's problems causing the problems, and it's easy to see if the drive's been dropped from the huge mark it'd leave on the platters.

I am sure that was a figure of speech, no need to call anyones ideas dumb...

On that note though, we should all be careful with our phrasing, never know who may read this forum :D