HDD corrupted/not recognised

[Deejah]

Recently, my GPU has been dying of old age. Specifically, the fan stopped working and it now heats up to 100° C when booting Windows. Now, I realise I just need to buy a new GPU, but it has caused another problem. The many system crashes that occurred when testing various ways of lowering the temperature (removing second monitor, heavy underclocking etc.) have damaged my HDD. I have Windows installed on an SSD, but whenever I boot Windows it says my E: drive needs to be checked by Check Disk. When I let it run, it eventually tells me it will check the master file table, after which Windows tells me it can't recover the master file table and CHKDSK is aborted. I can still get into Windows, as it's on my SSD, but I constantly get errors when I go to my desktop as that used to be on my E: drive (the HDD, the error in question: "E:\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. It could be on a hard drive on this computer, or on a network. Check to make sure that the disk is properly inserted . . ." - which it is).

Now, my HDD is neither recognised in my device manager nor tools such as MiniTool Partition Wizard, ZAR X or TestDisk. However, as said, Windows does still prompt me to run Check Disk whenever I boot up, so it does appear to be connected. During startup it also sometimes does list the HDD among my disks, whereas other times it does not.

Could anyone help me out? Thanks in advance for all your responses!

 

[drtweak]

Can we get a screen shot of the Disk management?

Also Overclocking and the GPU do not cause a hard drive to fail.

Also download and install Crystal Disk info in my signature. See if that detects the hard drive and if so see if it is failing or not.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, Deejah!

As soon as you can access your HDD's data, I'd advise you to back it up immediately. These prompts could be indicating hardware failure which could lead to data loss, so be careful and make sure you have a backup.

It's highly recommended to test your HDD using its manufacturer's brand-specific diagnostic tool. It will help you determine the health and SMART status of the drive. You should be able to find this utility on their official website, or you can refer to some third-party testing tool suggestions.

I'd also advise you to try connecting the HDD to a different SATA port on the mobo and even with a different SATA cable. You can also try plugging it externally via SATA-to-USB cable or to another computer to see how it will get recognized there.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted.
SuperSoph_WD

 

[Deejah]

For some reason, changing the Desktop folder location to be on my C: drive SSD rather than on my E: drive HDD allowed it to be seen again. However, it still prompts me to CHKDSK the E: drive on startup. It now no longer shows that the master file table is cannot be found, but instead it gets stuck on USN Journal Verification completed during startup and it gets stucks after stage 5 is completed when checking the disk in Windows. I tried using Diskeeper to defragment the disk but it says the disk is due for CHKDSK. I then tried to remedy this by using the 'chkdsk /x :e' command, but it still gives the same error in Diskeeper. However, I no longer get the check disk prompt during startup, which I would actually like to try again at this point. I have also tried various different SATA ports on the motherboard and cables. It didn't appear to make a difference.

I also tried using SeaTools. My HDD passes the SMART test, but it fails at all of the following: Fix all long, Generic Long and it hangs at Fix all short around 90% (it actually stops showing the percentage).

Lastly, drtweak, I realise a GPU can't make a hard drive fail. However, I do really think the many sudden system shutdowns forced by a crashing GPU must have been detrimental to my HDD. I'll test CrystalDiskInfo next and will report soon. Here is a screenshot of what CrystalDiskInfo tells me about the HDD, the 2 yellow ones are the only ones in the list: https://gyazo.com/2cf3bba0fa250fde09b60958f3b3ab93

 

[drtweak]

Damn. Nope has nothing to do with the GPU or even shut downs. that HDD is straight up failing and looks to have been slowly failing for a while now. Get what ever data you an off of it and replace the drive. See if it is still under warranty. if not just get a new drive.

If you click on Fuction at the top, then Advaned Features and then Raw Values change it to 10 DEC and it will give you actual numbers. that is in hexadecemal. C89 comes out to 3209. That is A LOT of Pending and Bad sectors there! an I MEAN A LOT I have not seen a hard drive that bad before. That guy is just gone and not usable at all.

 

[Deejah]

Alright, thank you very much. At least I still get the chance to make a backup of it.

 

[Deejah]

Also, how long a lifespan can be expected of an HDD? I just noticed the 17710 hours mine has and it got me curious. It seems rather impressive. Sorry for double-posting.

 

[drtweak]

It will vary. Sometimes people get the bad one in the batch. Bad sectors though are physical bad spots on the hard drive itself. They can sometimes be fix by doing full wipes a few times but even with that many bad sectors i don't see it coming back there.

I have hard drives that are 20 years old and work just fine. I have had hard drives die on me less than a month of getting them. it just varies.