Hard Drive keeps disappearing

[imis]

I have a really odd issue. My D: drive keeps disappearing. I will be working and then the computer will come to a stop. It stays like that for about 20 seconds and then my D drive is missing. If I reboot, it's there in bios and in windows, but eventually, it will fall off again. Any ideas? I recently added another drive to the computer, so I don't know if that would be an issue.

 

[semo]

if it is just the one drive disappearing then the drive might be faulty. use Data Lifeguard Diagnostic if your drive is western digital or seatools if it is seagate (for DOS!). how old is the drive and is it SATA or PATA

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?lang=en
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

 

[imis]

About 3 years old and its a seagate SATA Model st3400620as with firmware 3.aae. I downloaded the seagate tool. SMART check failed. The other tests within the tool work though and it passes.

 

[fzkl]

What is the motherboard (what chipset?)?

 

[semo]

3 year old HDD and SMART fails... just dump the drive or use or use another one just to test (if this is not your system drive). Does the drive switch off when it drops off windows?
If it still happens after you swap out both the data cable and the power cable then get rid of the thing

 

[Rezident]

Did you dislodge the power or SATA etc. cable when you were adding drives?

Also I once had a similar issue after adding drives when I was using the same power cable to power two or three drives - some drives require more power that others so they needed a dedicated power cable or else it kept disappearing in Windows. The drive might not be borked, it just might not be getting the power.

 

[Gillbot]

put it on a different power connector and change the device cable, see if it continues. If it does, it's likely a dying drive. If not, you may have a flaky data or power cable.