Unusable Second Hard Drive

[waiting4ram]

Greetings everyone. As the title says, my secondary hard drive--a Western Digital 1tb green series (i believe), is unusable since the first day I received it. Actually, I've tried two different hard drives as a secondary drive and both were ineffective. I'm not sure if I got two bad lemons in a row, or it's some other component like my motherboard that's causing the issue. Here are my custom built specs that I put together ~2 years ago:

Operating System: Windows 8 64bit
Case: Corsair 500r Black
Motherboard: ASUS z87-Pro
CPU: Intel i5 4670k
GPU: Nvidia GTX770
PSU: Corsair 600w (I believe, I forgot. It's sufficient with room to spare is what I remember)
Hard Drive: Samsung Evo 840 128gb

So to start, I first planned on using my SSD as a boot and my secondary hard drive to store everything else including most games. When I first put it together, I noticed my secondary hard drive was not being recognized so I ordered another hard drive to replace it. Had the same issue with the replacement. Ultimately I gave up trying to have a second hard drive, and just stuck with my SSD as my absolute only hard drive. Fast forward 2 years later, as any wise person can predict, 128gb is not enough for anything more than a casual user. But here's the catch..

After an absence of trying to make my secondary hard drive work, I finally returned to go at it again. This is because when I now go into the "my computer" section, I can now see the hard drive appear as "G:" drive, with all of its unused 928gb of storage. I ran one of those disk error check by right clicking the drive -> properties -> tools -> Error Checking. It says it does not detect any errors, and it was successful. So I tried downloading Grand Theft Auto V
onto the drive via Steam, and at about 4% download Steam tells me it cannot further download the game due to a Disk-Write error. Nothing new, I am not surprised.

I'm just tired of not being able to use my computer to its fullest capabilities, and also not even being able to play anymore games than just whatever can fit onto my SSD.

Seriously considering bringing my entire computer into microcenter to see if they can help me resolve this issue. Before I do, I was hoping if any of you who have any experience with this kind of issue can help me before I dish out hard earned cash to something I can maybe fix myself but I overlooked the problem? Or would it be worth it to have it professionally examined, as the problem may be something bigger than it looks (perhaps a motherboard issue while trying to put together the PC since it was my first pc build)?

Other than the secondary hard drive, I am experiencing no other issue with my computer.

🙁 🙁

 

[elbert]

Download data lifeguard and check the drives smart, generic, and self test. This is a WD tool and can tell you for sure if there are problems.
http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there waiting4ram,

That is really unpleasant. 🙁

I would agree with elbert. It would be a good start to just run both short and extended DLG tests on the drive.
Apart from that, you can attach the drive with different SATA and power cables to a different SATA port.

Is the drive still under warranty?

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

 

[waiting4ram]

Download data lifeguard and check the drives smart, generic, and self test. This is a WD tool and can tell you for sure if there are problems.
http://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3

i did the full scan using that software and nothing showed up as an error. tried downloading a smaller game about 3.2 GB, and at 53mb download progress it stopped with the same error as GTA V, that is, "Disk-Write Error"

 

[waiting4ram]

Hi there waiting4ram,

That is really unpleasant. 🙁

I would agree with elbert. It would be a good start to just run both short and extended DLG tests on the drive.
Apart from that, you can attach the drive with different SATA and power cables to a different SATA port.

Is the drive still under warranty?

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD

The drive is no longer under warranty. I will try the latter part, switching cables and different SATA port at another time. I will try the short scan to see if anything comes up. Thank you for the suggestion!

 

[elbert]

I'm begging to think your running steam and hitting the read only bug. Check your folders to make sure they aren't read only. You may also need to start steam with run as administrator. Left click the steam icon and select run as admin. If its already running shut it down and give it a go.

 

[waiting4ram]

I'm begging to think your running steam and hitting the read only bug. Check your folders to make sure they aren't read only. You may also need to start steam with run as administrator. Left click the steam icon and select run as admin. If its already running shut it down and give it a go.

so what i did was, i went into C: -> Program Files, found the Steam folder, went into properties and unchecked the Read Only box.

Not sure if there's any significance in this, but if I download games onto my main primary drive, so long as I have the necessary space for it the game will download without any problems. Just thought I should mention that.

Thank you for the help so far.

 

[waiting4ram]

*Update*

After unchecking the Read-Only box, I attempted to redownload a small game again. Same error "Disk-Write Error" appeared and halted my download. The option I have not tried yet was using a different sata port with different cables. I cannot remember correctly, but if I recall I might have tried that when I first had this issue some 2 years ago. Not sure if I will be doing that anytime soon, but if I do I will post here with an update. Really considering going to microcenter to see what they might have to say. I just don't want them to CAUSE a problem that doesn't exist, or for them to say this is the reason when it really isn't (my friend had an issue like that with an independent private computer repair store. they made him pay for a diagnosis, made him buy a bunch of parts he didn't need, and still didn't resolve his issue).

 

[elbert]

Have you tried uninstalling steam and reinstall? You may have corrupt files causing issues.