Question Hard disk drive suddenly disappearing while playing.

[MaxExile]

Hello, I've been having some issues with my HDD. I'm not exactly sure when this started, but I'd say around a month or so ago.
I have a 1TB Western Digital HDD (mostly for games) paired with a 250GB Kingston SSD (for OS and a few programs).
As I'm playing games that are installed on my HDD, my PC completely stops detecting the HDD at all, not even appearing on device manager, disk partition or anything at all. As expected, any game I'm playing closes immediately and I'm asked to reinstall on my SSD. In any other moment before this happens the HDD works completely fine and no problems are detected by Windows. The problem fixes the moment I reset my PC, but apart from it being pretty annoying, I'm mostly worried about my disk getting ruined or something even worse. If anyone can think of anything that could help or have been through this situation before I could really use some help. Thanks.

 

[Vikko151]

Hello @MaxExile,

I'm @Vikko151, and I will try helping you in your problem.

In any other moment before this happens the HDD works completely fine and no problems are detected by Windows.

Indeed, doing 3 resets per day to play a game for one hour is annyoing. The first thing I'd do is to swap the SATA cables, because if your disk works correctly and suddenly dissapears from the Windows Explorer, we should check the cable before predicting anything. So, by swapping the cables, I also say swapping the power cable (which is most unlikely the problem since it doesn't appear again, even if you restart). Then, check if the problem is still here.

I'm saying this because a faulty disk compromises the whole computer's speed, resulting sometimes to infinite start-ups. So, this might be the first thing to check.

I let you trying this operation to see if things are working correctly. If your whole computer crashes, it's even a better sign... If anything isn't clear, please tell it to me.

EDIT: If you are new to hardware, those are the SATA cables:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tkrsmco1BoN_xyQF4jGcXvak1UaMOCvj/view?usp=sharing

@Vikko151

 

[MaxExile]

Hello @MaxExile,

I'm @Vikko151, and I will try helping you in your problem.



Indeed, doing 3 resets per day to play a game for one hour is annyoing. The first thing I'd do is to swap the SATA cables, because if your disk works correctly and suddenly dissapears from the Windows Explorer, we should check the cable before predicting anything. So, by swapping the cables, I also say swapping the power cable (which is most unlikely the problem since it doesn't appear again, even if you restart). Then, check if the problem is still here.

I'm saying this because a faulty disk compromises the whole computer's speed, resulting sometimes to infinite start-ups. So, this might be the first thing to check.

I let you trying this operation to see if things are working correctly. If your whole computer crashes, it's even a better sign... If anything isn't clear, please tell it to me.

EDIT: If you are new to hardware, those are the SATA cables:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tkrsmco1BoN_xyQF4jGcXvak1UaMOCvj/view?usp=sharing

@Vikko151

Hello, Vikko! First of all, thank you for your help.
I switched both cables from the disks a few hours ago and I haven't gotten any problems at all in any of them both.
I suppose the problem may've been fixed, however I'll keep testing for a day or so just to make sure.
In case it actually is fixed, do you think I should get a new SATA cable as that one may not be working properly? or should I just stick to that one as long as it works? Thanks!