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Weird HDD issue

ahenkel

ahenkel

Diamond Member
Drive is a 2.5" toshiba 320gb sata

Drive doesn't seem to have a mechanical problem, not hearing any clicking, grinding, odd noises. However if I run scandisk or hd tune it gets to a certain point in the drive and the scan stops.

I then go and try to access the drive and it says drive F:/ not accessible, and its not visible in computer management/storage in Win7.

If I turn off my sata dock wait a couple seconds and turn it back on its the same thing. However if I give it 10-15 minutes the drive is accessible again.

any thoughts.
 
Presumably the dock has its own external power supply. This problem could be reproduced by an underpowered (ie, not enough current to the) HDD.

I doubt that it is the computer. (Make sure your port - USB? - to the dock isnt set to going into standby.) You will have to test both the dock & the HDD. Substituting another HDD would probably be the path of least resistance for analysis of the problem/issue.
 
The dock has its own power yes. I doubt its under powered as its only this drive I have problems with. The problem persists in other computers and a basic usb enclosure. I've tried another drive and the problem isn't there. As for sleeping I disable all that so my computer never sleeps.
 
Download Seagate's free HDD analysis tool (SeaTools) and run the tests (short then long) that it provides to determine if the drive can be repaired. Sometimes it is just a bad allocation unit that can be mapped out. SeaTools can do this for you.
 
If the HDD passes the SeaTools test then it is good. A recommendation is to just use it directly in a notebook computer or buy a quality external case for it that it will work with. My conclusion would be that the drive is being current limited by the Dock. That is, at some point, the drive wants to pull more current than the Dock will allow. These are usually circuit safety implementations (ie, overload protection for devices on both sides - power source & power user).

It is possible also that the HDD is defective in the sense of wanting to draw too much current (eg, out of spec in this regard & perhaps for peak current - usually only just at start up).

Some other possibilities:
- Use "WIPE" & totally erase the drive, reformat it & retry it.
- RMA it with the cause as intermittent failure
 
Hmmm well it passed the long test on HDtune, and windows scan disk. I guess I'll try to back up the drive again and see what happens. Very odd this drive is.
 
Just the fact that your HD tune goes haywire tells me its bad sector and slowly it will be more bad sectors until you start losing stuff. Get backup done ASAP! Then think about what HD you will get to re os on etc.. gl,
 
Drive is bad sector free, and has no mechanical defects thats what is odd. Physically the drive is fine. It just goes unresponsive after long periods of use. If I unplug the drive and wait ten minutes it works again.
 
I have the same issue with extranel usb drive determined the at it was power supply extranal unit. Determined this by take the drive out and plug it into ide port drive works fine.
 
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