Second HDD vanishs every once in awhile

[Lucas_55]

I had this second hard drive for about a year now. About half way through owning it it started to make a weird grinding sound on bootup everyone so often. Now in the past week I noticed that sometimes when I go to this pc it doesn't show that hard drive. I turned off the auto sleep after not using for a little but it still does it. Also sometimes on bootup it shows an all black screen with a white underscore flashing and this a new boot up screen I have never seen. Please help.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, @Lucas_55!

I'd strongly recommend you backup all your important files from this particular HDD somewhere off-site (another storage device) immediately. The grinding noises are never a good sign and could be indicating that the hard drive is physically damaged. Once you have your data copied somewhere safe, I'd advise you to run the HDD's brand-specific diagnostic tool or a third-party alternative to determine its health and SMART status. I'd also suggest you check if it's properly mounted inside your PC case and while inside, try swapping the SATA cable and the SATA port where the drive is currently connected to the motherboard.

Hope it helps you. Keep me posted!
SuperSoph_WD