PC hard drive is not being recognized.

[DoubleAUnknown]

I've been using this hard drive as my main storage for games for a while now and I've had no problems with it. Yesterday, however, it just decided it didn't want to show up anymore and now it's not being detected by my computer. I have three hard drives in total, 2 SSDs and the one that's giving me issues, which is just a traditional HD. The 2 SSDs are fine, nothing out of the ordinary there. I checked inside the case to make sure the HD was still connected to the motherboard and it still is. Just for the hell of it, I unplugged it and found another available spot to plug it into, but it still doesn't show up. Doesn't even show up on Disk Management. The only place where I see the HD popping up is when I first turn on the computer. I get a screen that briefly shows me the hard drives I have plugged in. I see it there, along side the SSDs. This is nothing unusual, I see it every time I boot up the computer. I checked to see if there are any new driver updates that could possibly be the issue, but nothing. I'm at a loss here, I really needs some help here.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, DoubleAUnknown.

Do you need to recover data from that HDD or you just want to find out what's the problem?
Trying the drive with a different SATA port is a good idea, however, I'd recommend that you give it a try with a different computer as well, if you have that option, or at least with different SATA cables, just to exclude the possibility of a faulty cable.
If the HDD is recognized by your BIOS (which I assume is, since you see it when you start the computer) an HDD diagnostic tool might be able to recognize it as well. So I'd recommend that you download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and check the drive's SMART data. If you want to recover data don't run any tests just yet, check only the SMART data and post a screenshot if possible.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[DoubleAUnknown]

Hey there, DoubleAUnknown.

Do you need to recover data from that HDD or you just want to find out what's the problem?
Trying the drive with a different SATA port is a good idea, however, I'd recommend that you give it a try with a different computer as well, if you have that option, or at least with different SATA cables, just to exclude the possibility of a faulty cable.
If the HDD is recognized by your BIOS (which I assume is, since you see it when you start the computer) an HDD diagnostic tool might be able to recognize it as well. So I'd recommend that you download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and check the drive's SMART data. If you want to recover data don't run any tests just yet, check only the SMART data and post a screenshot if possible.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD

Hey thanks for your reply, Boogieman.
I tried switching to different cables, but that didn't work. I only have this computer so unfortunately I can't try a different one. I downloaded the diagnostic tool and scanned my computer for hard drives. It didn't detect my HDD, only the 2 SSDs. But something really weird happened when I ran the scan again. Where as the previous scan detected the 2 SSDs and not the HDD, the second scan only detected one SSD, and that's it, nothing else. So I immediately checked in Disk Management and sure enough the second SSD was gone too. However that gets fixed as soon as I reboot the computer, but as soon as I scan the computer twice with the diagnostic, the second SSD disappears.

First Scan:
http://

Second Scan:
http://

 

[Boogieman_WD]

It could be an issue with the motherboard, or something else, having in mind that the SSD disappears as well. You could try resetting or updating your BIOS/UEFI, to see if that fixes things up.
Since you don't have a different computer to test the drives with, perhaps it won't be a bad idea to get your whole system to a computer service shop and get it fully diagnosed, so that you know what's causing the problem.

 

[DoubleAUnknown]

It could be an issue with the motherboard, or something else, having in mind that the SSD disappears as well. You could try resetting or updating your BIOS/UEFI, to see if that fixes things up.
Since you don't have a different computer to test the drives with, perhaps it won't be a bad idea to get your whole system to a computer service shop and get it fully diagnosed, so that you know what's causing the problem.

I think I may have figured it out. I don't know why this didn't work last time, but I just unplugged all the SATA cables, plugged them into different spots on the motherboard and plugged the other end of the SATA cables into the hard drives. That seemed to work. Everything was fine, my HDD was finally being read. But I was still curious as to why the HDD wasn't being detected in the first place so I just tested out every SATA cable I was using. It turns out this one cable in particular doesn't like playing nice with the HDD because that's the only cable that won't read the HDD, even though it reads the other SSDs. So I just took that one out entirely since it's probably just faulty.
I bought some new SATA cables, I'll be replacing the old cables with these new ones, once they get here. It could also just be that one of the SATA ports on the motherboard is bad, but I really don't wanna buy a new motherboard.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Good job. A faulty cable is probably the best case scenario. In any case I'd suggest that you run a diagnostic tool, just to be on the safe side and test the drive for errors and bad sectors. I'd recommend that you use the manufacturer's diagnostic tool, but you could also pick a 3rd party one from this article, just to double-check: https://www.lifewire.com/free-hard-drive-testing-programs-2626183

 

[DoubleAUnknown]

Good job. A faulty cable is probably the best case scenario. In any case I'd suggest that you run a diagnostic tool, just to be on the safe side and test the drive for errors and bad sectors. I'd recommend that you use the manufacturer's diagnostic tool, but you could also pick a 3rd party one from this article, just to double-check: https://www.lifewire.com/free-hard-drive-testing-programs-2626183

That would be a good idea. Thanks for all the help boogieman! I really appreciate it.