Intermittent issue with one HDD

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Sharl

Sharl

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Feb 21, 2014
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I currently have 3 HDDs in my computer and have recently (~2 weeks) been encountering an issue with one of them, a smaller drive I use for the storage of infrequently accessed files. Upon booting the computer, one of three things will happen:

1) Nothing abnormal; speedy boot, everything is fine.

2) Speedy boot, everything appears fine, drive in question works fine for some time and then goes blork at some unidentified point during the day. It still appears in the tree view and is displayed properly with space filled/free space all looking correct. Upon attempting to access the drive via explorer, it displays as being empty. Attempting to access it via a program will report that the destination does not exist.

3) Slow boot, drive (E: in this case) is not listed in the tree upon finally reaching Windows. It is listed with the other drives in the device manager as "Unknown device"; refreshing the manager will cause it to disappear and leave only the other two drives.

Is there a way to test this drive under the current circumstances so that I can confirm with absolute certainty that it is defective and in need of replacement? Do the symptoms listed above indicate any other possible causes? Thank you in advance for whatever help may be provided.
 
Solution
SkyNetRising
The drive is quite old - it has been in operation for at least 5 years.
It may have reached end of it's life.
Anyway - it's far easier (and cheaper) just to replace it than trying to fix it.
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I would if I could but the drive in question does not appear in the dropdown menu under the health tab. I'll haul the tower out to the kitchen so that I can try to redo the connections and see if I can get it up long enough to get that screenshot.
 
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I replaced both the cable going to the PSU and the one going to the mobo. The drive came up with the first boot but there does seem to be a problem indicated in the HD Tune health tab: https://puu.sh/vzK6X/51e3e9bc93.png

Being that both of the cables used as replacements were brand new and still in their original plastic, I'm not sure what else could be at fault here.
 
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This SMART attribute indicates errors that are caused by a faulty/corrupted communication between the HDD and the host (southbridge) and usually involves an issue with the SATA HDD connector, the SATA cable or the motherboard's ports.
This attribute is cumulative, so it shows all errors registered. If data value is not increasing anymore, then change of cable, has solved your drive problem.
 
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Makes sense. So this counter is something that builds up over the life of the drive whenever an error occurs and is only indicative of an ongoing issue if the counter increases after a possible fix is implemented? Which number in that report should I keep an eye on for an increase?
 
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Awesome. I'll keep an eye on things and hope that this is all fixed up now. Thanks a lot for your help!
 
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Aaaaand speak of the devil, a problem has appeared. The drive is still appearing in explorer but is again reporting as empty, programs report the destination does not exist, and while I can still select the drive from the health tab in HD Tune that tab is completely unpopulated and the error scan tab produces https://puu.sh/vzO5y/80a5103a01.png
 
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Just moved it from SATA 2 to SATA 6 and it did the whole slow boot/unrecognized device thing twice in a row now. Being that I also gave it its own socket on the modular PSU when I was replacing the cables earlier, I am absolutely out of common sense ideas I could pursue for testing; the same problem persists across changed cables and swapped slots on both mobo and PSU.

Do you have any other ideas I could try before I am forced to take the plunge and get a new HDD?
 
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I figured as much. This seemed like a good time to finally take the SSD plunge, even if I know nothing about them other than 'go fast zoom zoom'. Have they improved enough that it's okay to put a few daily-played games on them along with the OS, or are the writes still so limited that they aren't to be touched?

At the moment I am looking at a https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M8MF4IF for the OS and frequently used applications, and a pair of https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0088PUEPK for more general storage. Any red flags on these choices or should I go ahead and order them so that I can hopefully get the data off the fritzing drive before it decides to never function again?
 
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It has 6 SATA ports, one of which is occupied by the optical drive; the other 5 are free to use for storage as needed.

As for the HDD choice, mostly due to trying to keep costs low due to unexpected expense and also eligible for free same-day Prime shipping in my rush to beat the ailing drive's inevitable demise and save my data. https://smile.amazon.com/4TB-Datacenter-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B00CYSYYU8 also came up within my search criteria, along with several offerings from Seagate, Hitachi, and HGST. It's been so long since I paid attention to manufacturer reputation that I have no idea how reliable any of those are.

I'm looking to go $100-$200 on the HDD choices so please let me know if you have a better idea than the pair I picked up there. I'm currently running a 1 TB, 500 GB (troubled drive), and a 300 GB so it's not as if I have anywhere to go but up from here.
 
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Ah, I was searching by 7200 RPM drives and that would be why that particular option didn't come up for me. I placed my order this morning anyway when the same-day deadline was staring me in the face. Still trying to get the ailing drive to come up once more so that I can shift the data over to one of the other drives for backup and then it's time to install the new drives, hopefully with better results this time. I shall pass the time trying to find some up-to-date SSDs for Dummies guides because I am totally lost here.

Thanks a lot for all of your help!
 
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