Hard drive becomes undetected

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wewin

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Feb 5, 2013
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Recently, I installed 2 case fans on my computer making it a total of 4. The computer was running okay until earlier today when the hard drive became undetected while uploading some files.
What I did was removed 1 fan and switched to another sata port so I don't really know which of the two did the trick. Its running fine as of now. It happened twice already.
Hdd is a barracuda 500gb, psu is a cougar rs550, fans are generic w/ led.
What would most likely be the cause of the undetection? TIA
 
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mbarnes86

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Sep 16, 2010
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Hi

I don't think case fans have anything to do with it

Providing the SATA power & data cables are plugged in correctly
then either the electronic circuits on the hard disk are dying or the SATA Ports are dying

(There was one batch of Intel chip sets where version 1 & 2 had SATA II ports which may die after a period of use)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/219052/intel_knowingly_sells_faulty_sandybridge_chipsets.html

Since this has happened before run the hard disk manufacturers diagnostics and unless it passes get ready to change your hard disk.

Backup important data immediately as disk could die at any time

Finally do you mean Windows or BIOS can not see your hard disk ?
I was assuming BIOS

regards

Mike Barnes
 
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Solandri

Solandri

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Jan 4, 2012
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If the problem is intermittent, in my experience most of the time it's just a loose SATA cable. Jiggle it around a bit and see if that fixes it.

I used to run into this a lot. I've started paying a few cents more for the SATA cables with clips/latches, and it only happens very rarely now. If the SATA cable can wriggle a lot up-down, you should probably think about trashing it and replacing it.
 
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wewin

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Feb 5, 2013
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Thank you Mr. Barnes.

The drive appears on post and is detected by bios. I forgot to mention that I have a separate system drive and the drive in question is only for storage.

The last time it happened I was uploading files from that drive to a cloud storage. The transfer was suddenly stopped and when I went to explorer the drive couldn't be found anymore.

So I've been observing the computer lately and found out that I get voltage fluctuations every now and then, especially when switching on appliances like the microwave and the wash tub. Plus the fact that my avr has put on some years. Do you think that this might contribute to the problem? But still, even now that I get those fluctuations, the drive stays detected.

And btw it's an amd 780 chipset, so I guess that crosses out one possibility.
And still running on 3 of the 4 fans.
Will re-install and run seatools.

-Erwin
 
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wewin

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Feb 5, 2013
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Thank you Mr/Ms Solandri.

Actually, the cable I'm using now has a clip and is quite tight.
But, will still check to ensure if it's the cable or not.

-Erwin
 
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