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Hard Drive Vanishes...and reappears.

MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNARochester, MNRegistered User regular
Turned on the desktop this morning, and my D: was just gone. Rebooted, it's back.

Early sign this is dying and should get my backups going?

I am in the business of saving lives.

Posts

  • zepherinzepherin Russian warship, go fuck yourself Registered User regular
    If the drive is brand new or older than 5 years it’s probably started to shit the bed (especially if it isn’t SSD).

    There’s an old tool called spin right that I have used that worked pretty good getting some extra life out of old drives. There’s probably new and better software out there.

    I’m slightly disappointed this isn’t about a magic trick where you make hard drives disappear.

  • VishNubVishNub Registered User regular
    Definitely start by backing up anything you care about.

  • BlindZenDriverBlindZenDriver Registered User regular
    No chance on giving a sure diagnose.
    • As VishNub. Backup. First thing and keep backing up (a good rule in general).
    • Not to be the alarmist, but it can also be a sign your motherboard is dying*.
    • When you have done the backup, then look into S.M.A.R.T. and tools to be found on the company that made the drive.

    *I Have a pretty new 8 TB drive that after a few months started dropping out within an hour or two after boot. Since I am running this on a 10 year old Core i7 machine, and the rig is going to be replaced, I could not really be bothered to start bug hunting. Instead the drive is now connected through an external SATA-USB3 gizmo without any issues, something which does indicate that either the old motherboard is not really able to deal with a 8TB or the motherboard is dying.

    Bones heal, glory is forever.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    It's likely in a near failure situation.

    Platter drives (which I assume that is) will fail like zepherin said either very quickly, or after about half a decade.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • dispatch.odispatch.o Registered User regular
    The possibility also exists that it's not getting power some of the time. Though I'd still say it's probably in the early stages of failure, it wouldn't hurt to use a different power connection, especially if it's at the end of a long chain.

  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    The whole system is seven years old so very good to know, will begin the backup.

    Man, the screen to my laptop just snapped off and now this. Bad time for computers in this house.

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    That is about the lifespan of your average PC (before components like PSUs and Hard drives fail) so right on the money then!

    It could very well be a PSU on the fritz too, both are roughly the same amount dollar wise to replace unless you've got a SSD. Cheap capacitors (like those you find in store bought PCs) lose their ability to hold a charge over time and eventually they can no longer hold enough charge to provide power to certain devices, first ones to go are the 5v rails that power SATA and such.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • MugsleyMugsley DelawareRegistered User regular
    edited November 2019
    This is all good and true advice. Try using a different SATA port on the motherboard or a different SATA power connector to the drive and see if that helps, at least in the short term. Since this is a 'secondary' drive, you should be able to move it to different SATA ports without issue.

    A long shot, but you could also try replacing the SATA cable itself. I've yet to see a SATA cable die, so that would be your final move before pulling the drive and putting it into an external enclosure, as hinted above.

    FWIW, you can get a USB-3 to SATA power and data cable for under $10 US which is quite useful for stuff like drive cloning, copying data, or running various checkouts. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011M8YACM/

    (People: note you can delete all the "ref=" mumbo jumbo from your Amazon links!)

    Mugsley on
  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    edited November 2019
    Definitely take a look at the S.M.A.R.T sensor data for the drive:

    https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

    https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

    Zilla360 on
    |Ko-Fi Me! ☕😎|NH844lc.png | PSN | chi-logo-only-favicon.png(C.H.I) Ltd. |🏳️⚧️♥️
  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    Zilla360 wrote: »
    Definitely take a look at the S.M.A.R.T sensor data for the drive:

    https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

    https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

    Everything is in the blue or good on both of those monitors.

    Total on time is 13,842 hours which...jeez I need another hobby.

    I am in the business of saving lives.
  • BlindZenDriverBlindZenDriver Registered User regular
    MegaMan001 wrote: »
    Everything is in the blue or good on both of those monitors.

    Total on time is 13,842 hours which...jeez I need another hobby.

    LOL - That made me wonder so I just did a check on my main rig.

    17354 hours, 38409 hours, 26228 hours and 2287 hours(that is my relatively new 8 TB drive). On the rig I have also a few older SSD drives that was once doing work in a 24/7 server I have, the numbers for them is 43603 hours, 59546 hours and 52009 hours.

    All drives are given a green light, except the 38409 hour one which is marked yellow due to the Reallocated Sector Count being 199 and the Current Pending Sector Count at 200. Since it is a 1.5 TB which was once the C-drive of the machine, the big number does not surprise me - it is a 10 year old rig. The power on count is 3535!

    I too need another hobby (or rather I need to work less from home).

    Still my main point here is merely that hard drives including SSD's can work fine for a very long time.


    Bones heal, glory is forever.
  • SanderJKSanderJK Crocodylus Pontifex Sinterklasicus Madrid, 3000 ADRegistered User regular
    This is something that I haven't seen repeated, but it happened to me and it cost me a weekend to diagnose so I'm going to say it:

    I had a secondary HDD go missing on boot because a USB device was plugged in halfway. I guess something on the board controller went haywire.

    In my case it was an xbox 360 controller, and all through the kind of testing you're doing now I never noticed that it was blinking for a long time before continuing to Win10.

    When I put it in correctly, it came right back and functioned for 2 years.
    And then died quickly, back up your data

    Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
  • MegaMan001MegaMan001 CRNA Rochester, MNRegistered User regular
    SanderJK wrote: »
    This is something that I haven't seen repeated, but it happened to me and it cost me a weekend to diagnose so I'm going to say it:

    I had a secondary HDD go missing on boot because a USB device was plugged in halfway. I guess something on the board controller went haywire.

    In my case it was an xbox 360 controller, and all through the kind of testing you're doing now I never noticed that it was blinking for a long time before continuing to Win10.

    When I put it in correctly, it came right back and functioned for 2 years.
    And then died quickly, back up your data

    No shit that's...timely because some of my USB ports have been acting super weird lately.

    I am in the business of saving lives.
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