Intermittent Hard Drive 'Disappearance'

[MiNdWaRp]

Hello all,

I've been having an intermittent issue with any secondary SATA drive I plug in with 2 different motherboards. Sometimes, I will be able to see and use my hard drive and sometimes I will not be able to. This issue ONLY happens with my secondary SATA hard drive. My Primary OS drive and my DVD-ROM drive both show up every time on boot.

So far, I have upgraded my power supply to a 1250W, which is definitely sufficient for my setup. I have tried 2 different drives on my initial P8P67 Deluxe board and gotten the same problem with any SATA port I plug it into. I tried a BIOS update and still got the same issue. I figured it was perhaps an issue with being run at 6Gbps, but 4 of my ports are 3Gbps and it still had the issue when plugged into those. I also updated the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver with the same results. This led me to believe it has defective SATA ports.

I am currently using a P8H61-M LE/CSM with the same setup and getting the same problem I got with the other board. I haven't tried my other hard drive, but I'm confident I will see the same thing again.

I have not tried a clean install of Windows yet and have not been able to recreate this issue without my 300GB Velociraptor plugged in. At this point, I am wondering if anyone can give me any other suggestions before I go ahead and wipe my drive.

Here's my setup:

OCZ X-1250
ASUS P8P67 Deluxe (ASUS P8H61-M LE/CSM was also available for testing purposes)
Intel Core i5-2500K
Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600MHz
Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000GLFS
Seagate Barracuda 1TB (Also tested with Western Digital WD2500JS)
LG DVD Burner
Sapphire Radeon HD 4890

 

[rolli59]

Does it show up in BIOS or disk management when it does not show up in my computer?

 

[MiNdWaRp]

No, it does not.

I'm thinking it may be an issue with my main hard drive, but I've never heard of a defective hard drive that worked perfectly before causing other drives to not show up.

I will be installing windows on my secondary drive and using it as my primary this weekend. The WD actually has 1 or 2 bad sectors and emits a high-pitched whistle when it is on, so I will be RMAing it.

 

[rolli59]

If it does not show up in BIOS then it sounds like the drive is failing or the cable.

 

[dapdacompx]

i have the same issue, its happening to drives 2-3 in my computer. I put the drives in another computer and they do not disappear any ideas?

 

[MiNdWaRp]

I've grabbed another drive from work to test out since I've discovered the 250G I have sitting around is not running as quick as it should. I haven't had any issues so far, but I grabbed it just last night.

Looks like SMART checks aren't always reliable gauges of whether a hard drive is defective or not.

 

[liviu81x]

Maybe the cables, maybe the power adaptor at the HDD part is broken ? I had the same issue just recently, a piece of plastic near the power plug at the HDD came off and the system couldn't find the drive sometimes.

 

[MiNdWaRp]

I have determined that it was, in fact, 2 bad hard drives. Good thing I have easy access to test drives at work.

Thanks for your help everyone!

 

[MiNdWaRp]

Best answer selected by MiNdWaRp.