Laptop Secondary HHD Detected Only Occasionally

[Damager56]

I have an ASUS A43S laptop and it was getting to the end of its life span with long expired warranty.

I thought why not revive this guy with an SSD, so I did, I swapped out the old HHD for an SSD, for additional storage I took out the CD-Rom bay and replaced it with a new secondary storage HHD.

Tinkered with it for a while and it was all up in running, the only problem I encountered was the new HHD, it was a 9mm thick but the space was really meant for 12mm, so there was a bit more room. I figured since it is just a stationary office laptop it shouldn't be a problem.

My set up was all the OS related files are on my SSD and non-OS files are stored on my HHD.

The Problem:
On occasions, when I start up the computer, the HHD is not detected, and since my SSD was working fine, I could get into Windows 10 and all. So far a restart is what it needs to get the computer recognizing the secondary HHD again.

Anyone know what may have caused this problem? And how I can fix this?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there Damager56.

I'd recommend that you try connecting the caddy to a SATA port of a different computer, along with the HDD to see if you have the same issues again, because there might be some problems with the caddy itself. Another suggestions is to try the drive (alone) with a different computer, this way if the issue reoccurs, you should be able to isolate the problem and find out if the caddy is at fault. You should also download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics tool and run the tests on the drive, to see if any errors pop-up. Don't forget to backup any important data which you might have on the HDD before any of those procedures.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Damager56]

Hey there Damager56.

I'd recommend that you try connecting the caddy to a SATA port of a different computer, along with the HDD to see if you have the same issues again, because there might be some problems with the caddy itself. Another suggestions is to try the drive (alone) with a different computer, this way if the issue reoccurs, you should be able to isolate the problem and find out if the caddy is at fault. You should also download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostics tool and run the tests on the drive, to see if any errors pop-up. Don't forget to backup any important data which you might have on the HDD before any of those procedures.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks for the response.

The occurrence is quite random that I can't pin point when it will actually occur.

I will try your suggestions once i get the gear together.

Will try the drive diagnostic first to see if there are any issues.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Don't mention it.
I'd recommend that you don't run any diagnostics tools yet, if you want to recover data. The thing is that some of the tests scan the drive extensively and if the HDD has some kind of a mechanical fault or too many bad sectors, this could result in the drive's permanent failure. When there's an HDD problem it's best to try and recover any valuable data there might be - first and run diagnostic tests after that.