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Need hard drive or motherboard help

A

archcommus

Diamond Member
Hey guys, I have a Seagate 120 GB 7200.7 ST3120026A hard drive. It will be three years old next month. Obviously being a Seagate and not even three years old I never anticipated any problems with this drive.

Well, just now I was doing a bunch of stuff, and all of a sudden the HDD activity light came on and the computer became completely unresponsive. I did a hard reboot and it didn't detect my hard drive in BIOS. I tried clearning CMOS, different port, different cable, and different power connector, no help. Then I took the drive and hooked it up to my roommate's system in place of his secondary CD drive. Same thing - BIOS does not detect it on the Auto setting.

So does that confirm my drive is dead? It's been working perfectly fine, and as a matter of fact I JUST ran Hitachi Drive Fitness Test on it last week and it came back green - no problems.

Help please!

***UPDATE 2/13***
Well I fixed the initial problem by moving the drive to my friend's system, where it WAS detected, and running SeaTools on it. SeaTools reported no problems, then I popped the drive back into my system and it was fine.

Again tonight, four days later, the random HDD activity kicked up. It didn't stop after a few minutes so I pulled the power cord this time. Upon restart, once again, detected no drives at all. I unplugged the HDD and plugged my DVD drive into the primary channel - it was then able to detect it no problem. Popped the HDD back into the secondary channel, suddenly the board didn't detect EITHER drive. Defintely makes it seem like the presence of the hard drive causes a problem. HDD's fault, or motherboard's? I don't know how to tell.

I then unplugged the HDD, and plugged it back in while the system was on hoping that SeaTools would detect it so I could test it again. However it didn't recognize it, so I turned it off and turned it back on (with optical still in primary and HDD in secondary) and now it detected both drives. Swapped them back again to the right channels and it was still fine.

So the pattern repeated itself. Random activity, reboot, no drives detected, after a bunch of fiddling and moving things around it eventually detected it again.

I don't know if my motherboard or my hard drive is to blame.

And apparently, I've had this problem before. Text December of 2005! Weird that it would happen, then not happen for over a year, and now start happening more frequently.
 
Sounds to me like it's toast. Only other things I can think of now, are to see if Spinrite will get it going, or else find an identical drive and swap PCBs. And maybe the freezer trick, though I've heard that doesn't really do anything.
 
The freezer trick has actually worked for some people.

If the drive is still mechanically working, ie spinning up and seeking, then thats a good sign. I would keep trying to make the bios recognize the drive, the same symptom happened to me but i got the bios to see it after many attempts of wiggling wires, banging the drive, rapid reboots etc.

otherwise try freezing the drive for like 10mins or so then try it. Good luck.
 
Thanks guys. Yes, the drive is still humming and you can feel it vibrating inside when it is powered on. After my friend's system's BIOS didn't detect it either, I put in my UBCD disc and restarted. I entered the BIOS and this time his computer DID detect it! So I made sure his boot priority had CD before HDD and then rebooted and launched Seagate SeaTools Desktop. I ran the DST Quick Test and it passed. Right now I am in class and it is running the DST Full Test. Hopefully it passes that too and if it does I'll try it back in my system.

Just curious, what is the freezer trick? Just stick it in the freezer for a few minutes? Longer? How does it help?

And finally, if it does past DST and starts working again, what kind of problem do you think would cause the BIOS to fail to detect a drive repeatedly and then all of a sudden detect it again?
 
Check the ide cable for any damage, or loose connections on the connector.

The drive could be slowly failing, make sure to backup all critical data as soon as you can.

Heat makes metal expand, The freezer basically makes sectors easier to read by slowing this expansion on the platter.

 
Well the Quick and Full Seagate SeaTools Desktop DST tests passed with no errors, and according to Seagate that means the drive is definitely fine. I pulled it from my roommate's system and put it back in mine and the BIOS detected it and it booted no problem.

So, what in the world happened? Any ideas?
 
Wow....the sudden-no-explanation HDD activity just happened again, and again the computer became unresponsive. However this time I didn't reboot, and after a minute or so it came back. Weird.
 
Originally posted by: jkresh
as has already been said backup asap.
Click to expand...
I have, I do pretty frequently to an external HDD anyway.

But I think the drive is okay. Seagate's site says if it passes DST it's FINE, period. It would be ashame if that was incorrect. And it passed both the quick and full DSTs, as well as Hitachi's DFT a couple weeks ago. I just don't understand what this weird thing is of sudden inexplicable HDD activity, and then if you reboot it doesn't detect the HDD for awhile. Hopefully it won't happen anymore, if it does it seems the thing to do is wait and hope it stops instead of rebooting.
 
the drive might be fine but the connectors might be a problem, (I believe the test just checks the drive heads/sectors... not the drives connection with the board).
 
My experience with the "Freezer Trick"...

I had a 120GB WD JB drive that started locking up for no reason.
Even a reboot would only allow it to run for a few seconds.

I needed data from the drive.

I let the system sit for a few hours out of frustration, then tried it again.
The drive lasted a minute or so before locking. Hmm, I though... heat related.
BTW, The side of the case was off the whole time and the system ran cool.

I placed the drive in an anti-static bag and put it in the freezer.
I pulled the drive from the freezer after a few hours and quickly connected it back up. I didn't bother mounting it, just connected the cables.
I booted and popped a CD-R in to burn my data. Everything worked fine, until I finally sold the system.

Yes, I kept using the drive for at least a year before selling the PC.
It never gave me any more problems after spending time in the freezer. 😀


Cost of repair = $0.00
 
Originally posted by: Blain
My experience with the "Freezer Trick"...

I had a 120GB WD JB drive that started locking up for no reason.
Even a reboot would only allow it to run for a few seconds.

I needed data from the drive.

I let the system sit for a few hours out of frustration, then tried it again.
The drive lasted a minute or so before locking. Hmm, I though... heat related.
BTW, The side of the case was off the whole time and the system ran cool.

I placed the drive in an anti-static bag and put it in the freezer.
I pulled the drive from the freezer after a few hours and quickly connected it back up. I didn't bother mounting it, just connected the cables.
I booted and popped a CD-R in to burn my data. Everything worked fine, until I finally sold the system.

Yes, I kept using the drive for at least a year before selling the PC.
It never gave me any more problems after spending time in the freezer. 😀


Cost of repair = $0.00
Click to expand...
Wow, weird and hard to believe but cool.

Originally posted by: jkresh
the drive might be fine but the connectors might be a problem, (I believe the test just checks the drive heads/sectors... not the drives connection with the board).
Click to expand...
I don't know, possibly, but on Seagate's site it says, and I quote, "If you are troubleshooting your disc drive and the DST passes, then you have a good drive!" That seems like a pretty clear statement to me, so I imagine it tests all drive functionalities - at least, it certainly should!
 
Well I definitely have some kind of issue. Again tonight the random HDD activity kicked up. It didn't stop after a few minutes so I pulled the power cord this time. Upon restart, once again, detected no drives at all. I unplugged the HDD and plugged my DVD drive into the primary channel - it was then able to detect it no problem. Popped the HDD back into the secondary channel, suddenly the board didn't detect EITHER drive. Defintely makes it seem like the presence of the hard drive causes a problem. HDD's fault, or motherboard's? I don't know how to tell.

I then unplugged the HDD, and plugged it back in while the system was on hoping that SeaTools would detect it so I could test it again. However it didn't recognize it, so I turned it off and turned it back on (with optical still in primary and HDD in secondary) and now it detected both drives. Swapped them back again to the right channels and it was still fine.

So the pattern repeated itself. Random activity, reboot, no drives detected, after a bunch of fiddling and moving things around it eventually detected it again.

I don't know if my motherboard or my hard drive is to blame.

And apparently, I've had this problem before. Text December of 2005! Weird that it would happen, then not happen for over a year, and now start happening more frequently.
 
Is there any way to run the HDD on a new channel (used to be on its own channel, put it on the same channel as DVD drive instead)? Or a different HDD on the same channel? If so, try those, see what happens, and use that info in your troubleshooting.
 
Originally posted by: soydios
Is there any way to run the HDD on a new channel (used to be on its own channel, put it on the same channel as DVD drive instead)? Or a different HDD on the same channel? If so, try those, see what happens, and use that info in your troubleshooting.
Click to expand...
Thanks. Good advice, but I am limited in those options. I only have one HDD, one DVD drive, and two single-device cables. Each device has always been on its own channel, with the HDD on primary and the DVD on secondary. I believe the DVD is set to Master and the HDD is set to Cable Select, however when this problem happened before the HDD was set to Master.

On one hand it sounds like a hard drive issue because of the random activity, and because the presence of the drive seems to interfere with detection of either drive. OTOH it sounds like a motherboard issue, simply because it has more to do with detecting or not detecting devices than it does with the actual performance of the hard drive. Also because DST reports ZERO errors, and according to Seagate that means a good drive.
 
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