Hard Drive Disappears

S

stitchmanz

n00b
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Jan 12, 2012
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Our PC keeps breaking down. It will suddenly lock up and when you try to reboot it, it no longer recognizes the hard drives. When it happened on Sunday, I could not get it to work but the next day I reset the BIOS and it started working.

It went down again today and is still not working so I’ll try again tomorrow.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why the drives disappear randomly? Any particular components I should be checking out?


Thank you very much

Jerry Van Horn
 
Don't make us guess what hardware you are using. You've done the equivalent of saying "my vehicle is making funny noises. Any ideas?"
 
my guess is time to throw it out and get a new one.


either the hard drive is failing or the mobo is failing i would say the drive controller or control board on the drive is going bad try a new hard drive see if that fixes it if not the mobo needs replacement.
 
I agree with Lunas, if it's multiple drives not showing up all of a sudden it's probably the controller. I would also check the power supply connections that go to the hard drives. Make sure nothing is loose or obviously faulty.
 
I'd bring up the possibility that he might have a P67 B2 motherboard if I weren't so cranky tonight.
 
Here are my components. The SSD drive contains the operating system and it won’t boot up since it isn’t being recognized.

Windows 7 Home premium, 64-bit.
Western Digital WD Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
SAPPHIRE 100352-2L Radeon HD 7950 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card
Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866 (PC3 14900) Desktop Memory Model F3-1866C10D-16GAB
Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I73770K
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO RR-212E-20PK-R2 Continuous Direct Contact 120mm Sleeve CPU Cooler Compatible with latest Intel 2011/1366/1155 and AMD FM1/FM2/AM3+
Corsair Carbide Series 500R White Steel structure with molded ABS plastic accent pieces ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
SeaSonic X750 Gold 750W ATX12V V2.3/EPS 12V V2.91 SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
The monitor is a Samsung S27A350H

Thank you very much

Jerry
 
Install and run CrystalDiskInfo to see if the hard drive believes it is operating abnormally.
 
You probably have the SSD and the HDD plugged into the grey 6Gb/s slots on the motherboard.

First, unplug both ends of the data cables between the motherboard and the SDD and HDD, and unplug both ends of the power cables between the PSU and the SSD and HDD. Inspect the ends of all of these cables for any damage, scorch marks, melting, etc. Then plug them all back in, into the same places, making very sure that every plug is plugged in all the way. I'm very serious about this basic troubleshooting step - it's not uncommon to have a SATA cable wiggle just a bit loose from the plug.

If you still have the problem, plug the SSD only into one of the black 3Gb/s slots that you have not used to see if it works there. Same thing with the HDD.

Are both the SSD and the HDD not being recognized? If so, the odds that both are failing at the same time are really low. Unless you've sustained a lightning strike that came down the power line and fried them.
 
Did you update the Crucial M4 firmware to the versons after the bug that causes the M4 not to be recognized after a certain amount of power on time?
 
I got this advice from another board and it worked, so my machine is back and running. Thank you everyone for your suggestions:

Older M4 firmwares can get hung up if the computer crashes unexpectedly. The way to get the drive to recover is to unplug the computer completely for a couple of minutes to drain the power. Then let the computer sit on the BIOS screen for about 20 minutes, this gives the drive enough time to reset. When you reboot from the BIOS, the drive should come back. You should then immediately update the firmware to keep the problem from recurring.


Jerry
 
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