Question HDD or Sata cable/controller failure?

lemming3k

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So I had a sudden issue with my largest HDD last night (1 of 3) where it suddenly gave the error "drive not accessible".
I was a able to see the drive in file explorer and disk management but not open it. A couple of restarts didn't resolve, it showed "unknown device" in device manager and not initialised in disk management. It would not initialise, again saying not accessible.
I've swapped it onto a Sata cable from one of the other drives and it's now reading. Chkdsk shows no errors. I will run the Toshiba disk check later.
I've had issues with the drive not waking from sleep in the past, but only on this system not my other one. My thinking is the Sata cable is dying (how do I test this?) Or the MB Sata controller is faulty (again not sure how to test?). I've noticed one other drive disappearing from file explorer but it comes back (as if it's sleeping). HDD is only a year old but I know it could still have a fault, just the behaviour seems inconsistent with this and tests show no errors.

Does anyone have any further ideas or advice to confirm? All parts should be under warranty. Thanks.
 
You ask how to test for faulty sata cables. You simply cannot do directly - unless one conductor inside is completely disconnected, and you'll be able to measure with a multimeter and a set of loose sata connectors (i.e. not feasible unless you already have a dead mainboard or sata controller and know how to desolder the connectors itself).
The best way of ruling out bad sata cables is to just replace and see if it works better from that.

A sata controller my or may not have any means of self check mechanism, and if it have then the OS must be able to respond in a proper manner (i.e. "drive not accessible" frankly isn't a very helpful message in order to narrow down the problem).
Likewise to the cable, the only feasible way to rule out sata controller issue is to use another sata controller. But you must first get to know what sata ports on the motherboard is connected to that sata controller, because one controller may be connected to more than one sata port.

The hdd itsef is much more easy to check for fault because you can do that with software that can read the s.m.a.r.t. values and from there get an assessment of the hdd's health. This of course assumes that both sata controller and cable is in good working order. If the hdd isn't encrypted in any way or part of a raid set, plugging in into another computer can helt determine if something else than the hdd itself are faulty.
 

Misgar

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I had similar problems with a SATA hard disk in an old PC. Sometimes the PC would detect the drive during POST. Other times the drive would not be detected.

The problem turned out to be corrosion on the terminals inside both ends of the SATA cable. This became obvious when I broke into the cable connectors with a pair of pliers. The contacts were covered in green "fur".

Judicious use of IPA on a paper towel at an ESD workstation cleaned the last traces of corrosion off the gold plated contacts on the hard disk.

I ditched the old SATA cable and fitted a brand new high quality latched cable which fixed the fault.

If you have another PC or a USB dock, you could use it to test the hard disk(s) with different cables. You might need to run CHKDSK (or similar) to repair errors.

I don't allow my hard disks (or USB ports) to go to "sleep" in Windows, to avoid possible problems when they wake up.
 

lemming3k

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You ask how to test for faulty sata cables. You simply cannot do directly - unless one conductor inside is completely disconnected, and you'll be able to measure with a multimeter and a set of loose sata connectors (i.e. not feasible unless you already have a dead mainboard or sata controller and know how to desolder the connectors itself).
The best way of ruling out bad sata cables is to just replace and see if it works better from that.

A sata controller my or may not have any means of self check mechanism, and if it have then the OS must be able to respond in a proper manner (i.e. "drive not accessible" frankly isn't a very helpful message in order to narrow down the problem).
Likewise to the cable, the only feasible way to rule out sata controller issue is to use another sata controller. But you must first get to know what sata ports on the motherboard is connected to that sata controller, because one controller may be connected to more than one sata port.

The hdd itsef is much more easy to check for fault because you can do that with software that can read the s.m.a.r.t. values and from there get an assessment of the hdd's health. This of course assumes that both sata controller and cable is in good working order. If the hdd isn't encrypted in any way or part of a raid set, plugging in into another computer can helt determine if something else than the hdd itself are faulty.
Thankyou, I was afraid that might be the case but was hoping it was a specific area of knowledge I lacked! I'll swap the cables and run the Toshiba test and see what happens.
It came out another system where it worked fine, but that was about 9 months ago so I guess anything can happen in that time.
 

lemming3k

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I had similar problems with a SATA hard disk in an old PC. Sometimes the PC would detect the drive during POST. Other times the drive would not be detected.

The problem turned out to be corrosion on the terminals inside both ends of the SATA cable. This became obvious when I broke into the cable connectors with a pair of pliers. The contacts were covered in green "fur".

Judicious use of IPA on a paper towel at an ESD workstation cleaned the last traces of corrosion off the gold plated contacts on the hard disk.

I ditched the old SATA cable and fitted a brand new high quality latched cable which fixed the fault.

If you have another PC or a USB dock, you could use it to test the hard disk(s) with different cables. You might need to run CHKDSK (or similar) to repair errors.

I don't allow my hard disks (or USB ports) to go to "sleep" in Windows, to avoid possible problems when they wake up.
Thanks. The cables were previously unused but don't think they were new so I suppose that could be the issue.
I stopped putting the PC to sleep and never had an issue with the drive since, but I never did resolve it. Just assumed the new board couldn't handle it properly for some reason.
Yesterday was very sudden so all a bit odd.
 

lemming3k

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Really, there's not much *direct* testing you can do, just practical testing of swapping cables.

Drives or cables can fail at any time (and will). The solution is to not worry about it, but organize your computer(s) and your backup regime in a way that a hard drive suddenly dying is simply a mild inconvenience.
I try to back up every couple of weeks, and have some temporary internal backups in the mean time. Data wise I was probably only risking a day so not bad at all.
Troubleshooting was the main inconvenience and potentially losing my largest drive. Since all drives came out another system where they were flawless my gut tells me something on the board isn't handling things as well as it should, but I did swap in a different set of sata cables since the internal colouring is different. They weren't brand new though, just unused.
 

lemming3k

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Update: I've run the Toshiba HD checker and it comes back clean (just like chkdsk).
I'm still none the wiser on the cause, but as a precaution I moved the drive to a different sata port and changed the cable.
At least then if it's the port/controller another (less critical) drive will disappear and identify this as the issue.
If it's the drive then there's no real excuse for it to happen again and suggests it isn't related to bad sectors etc so I guess there are other reasons for HDD failure that may not be picked up by these tools. Sadly the only thing I can do is wait and see.
I may test the cable at a later date.