Does a HDD fail out of the blue?

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Jan 24, 2007
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Hello, I'm trying to figure out if I lost a HDD in my server. I have 2 smaller HDDs, 1 for OS and the other for basic storage like music and pictures, and then I have 2 WD Green 2TB drives, 1 for Movies and the other for TV shows. I stream from the Movies and TV show drives to other PCs hooked up to TVs in the rest of the house.

Literally out of nowhere the TV show drive stopped showing up completely. I opened up the server and switched around SATA cables, SATA ports, and SATA power connectors and that drive just doesn't show up. I even unhooked the Movies drive just to make sure there wasn't a conflict.

The drive doesn't show up in the BIOS list of drives, or even in the OS in Device Manager, so does this mean the drive died out of nowhere? Is there any way to actually test if its gone, some program or something? Thanks guys.
 
They can for sure. Did you track SMART data? It doesn't always tell if a drive ii going to crash or is slowly dying but it helps.

Any weird noises?
 
Yes, sudden death is a thing for drives.
As per the Google hard disk survey, about a third of all drives that die have no indications whatsoever in the SMART attributes indicating an approaching problem.
 
They can for sure. Did you track SMART data? It doesn't always tell if a drive ii going to crash or is slowly dying but it helps.

Any weird noises?
Nope no weird noises. I actually always have HWinfo64 running and only 1 drive has shown a Drive Warning for the SMART data, but its the old HP 320gb that doesn't really matter, and its been that way for a long time lol.

Yes, sudden death is a thing for drives.
As per the Google hard disk survey, about a third of all drives that die have no indications whatsoever in the SMART attributes indicating an approaching problem.
Hm, I always thought they would start acting up before dying.

So is there any way to still access the drive? I've downloaded a couple programs that say they can recover from dead drives, but when I load them up only the drives that still work show up, not the one I'm trying to recover from lol.
 
they can fail suddenly especially ssd but typically with spinning disk recovery is possible and they tend to either click or stop showing up first

sudden failure is usially the controller though and a simple board swap is all that is needed to do recovery
 
they can fail suddenly especially ssd but typically with spinning disk recovery is possible and they tend to either click or stop showing up first

sudden failure is usially the controller though and a simple board swap is all that is needed to do recovery

is that do able for the normal person? are those parts common?
 
+1, I'm intrigued!

It's possible but the catch is parts available there is no drive manufacturer that sells them separately. Typically the only source is a second working donor drive. It will be something like 4 t5 torx on the bottom of the drive holding the board on then it uses pins to plug into a header if you get a identical drive you should be able to swap them easily.

the other issue that can cause sudden failure is the drive motor this will require clean room recovery.

long discussion short data recovery is almost always possible it just requires enough effort.

some drives use a mylar ribbon cable instead of pins and socket...
 
I have a HD that did the same thing.
Good news is I'm able to get data off using external usb3 drive. It bypasses the smart or ignores it. Try, you might be able to get data that way.In my case when drive gets hot data disappears-let it cool down and grab more data. Also Smartmon tools told me of another drive with smart data failures,where as other tools did not. Try that also. I hope this helps.
 
Hey guys, bumping this up. For some reason, totally out of the blue again, my other drive is now gone and the one that was gone before is back.

As I said in the OP, there are 2 WD Green 2TB drives, one for Movies and one for TV Shows. Before it was the TV shows drive that completely disappeared, and no matter what I did it wouldn't show up. Now out of nowhere, its doing the complete opposite. The Movies drive is totally gone and the TV shows drive is back and working like nothing happened. Is there a possibility of conflict between these 2 drives? I'm at a total loss of whats going on here...
 
Have you tried to unplug one and see if maybe it could be an issue with the sata ports?
 
I've done multiple combinations of both drives using different SATA cables and ports, and with only 1 or the other plugged in at a time.
 
Backup the data you can and replace the drives.

I have seen drives come back like that, but generally they will fail again.
 
Under the circumstances I don't feel like either one has died, its like there's a conflict. Literally the exact opposite is happening. At first one drive was completely gone and the other was fine, now the one that was gone is back and the one that was fine is gone. I am transferring stuff off of that drive that came back just in case, I guess I'll see what happens.
 
It's possible but the catch is parts available there is no drive manufacturer that sells them separately. Typically the only source is a second working donor drive. It will be something like 4 t5 torx on the bottom of the drive holding the board on then it uses pins to plug into a header if you get a identical drive you should be able to swap them easily.

the other issue that can cause sudden failure is the drive motor this will require clean room recovery.

long discussion short data recovery is almost always possible it just requires enough effort.

some drives use a mylar ribbon cable instead of pins and socket...

you have to be careful when board swaping... even the wrong revision of board = drive will most likely not work...

We used to board swap drives all the time back when I worked as a PC tech...
 
you have to be careful when board swaping... even the wrong revision of board = drive will most likely not work...

We used to board swap drives all the time back when I worked as a PC tech...

This.


There are more ways a drive can fail than there are smart parameters.
Its not possible to track all of them without raising costs and complexity substantially.
Yes, its definitely possible for a drive to just die out of the blue.


Intermittent drive failure usually indicates a bad connection, unreliable power supply or a faulty component (ie drive, cable, motherboard).
Sometimes there is a problem with the drives firmware that the mfr later addresses and you may be able to fix it.

Its wise to test your drives in another motherboard to be sure they are the problem.
Your problerm looks like something that is common to both drives - the motherboard or PSU. Or perhaps they are both running firmware that has the same fault (if it is a firmware issue).

If you cant check the drives in another machine, start by checking if your motherboards BIOS is up to date <- do this anyway.
If it is, reset the CMOS on the motherboard in case it is corrupt.
(take note of your settings before doing either)
 
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