HDD is not detected at times

[zenon.lambrou]

Hello,
My cousin's laptop won't detect the internal HDD. The laptop boots fine because the OS is installed on the SSD.

The strange thing is when he tries to run Overwatch for example if the HDD is not detected the Battle net client will say install the game since the game is on the HDD and is not detected. However when pressing install the client detects the installation and installs the game really fast.

Is that a hardware or software problem?

Thanks in advance,
Zenon

 

[genz]

Hardware. Your games are being scanned by software, and generating bad blocks. Enough of these in a row results in the OS force-ejecting the disk which is probably why it keeps disappearing.

Because there are only bad blocks within files, any online-updated game will happily detect the 'changed' files and return them to thier normal state. If not part of 'update' then as part of 'anti-cheat'. The locations of the bad blocks are banned from access by the OS/apps and the newly downloaded bits of data written to a different part of the disk. This repeatedly happening is a sure-fire sign of a near-dead drive or virus/rootkit as you are literally seeing the data go bad.