Windows didn't recognize my internal hard-drive on boot up. Is this a bad sign, or bad luck?

TheTenaciousOtaku

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The HDD has been installed and running for a long time. I booted the PC up for the first time today and the hard-drive didn't show up with the other HDD's. I shutdown/restarted the system and the HDD showed up like normal. As far as I notice, it is working like normal.

What could be the problem have been?
 
Solution
You can try a diagnostic tool from the drive manufacturer to test the drive and see whether or not it is about to fail. Even with this a backup is a good idea.
Not quite sure what the problem could have been but will suggest you make a backup of that drive if you haven't already. I would do this before shutting down to see if the problem occurs again. I'm assuming this is a data drive and not the OS drive. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 

TheTenaciousOtaku

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Thanks for your condolences.

It's a Seagate Barracuda 1TB ST1000DM003 Hard-drive that I bought in April-ish 2012. That means it lasted about 2 years. That sounds like a really short life span to me. 3 years would be somewhat acceptable right?

I took good care of the drive as well. It was stationary for 99% of its life (apart from switching cases once). It was also completely cleared once. I did regular maintenance, anti-virus, defrag etc. I had my folders super organized... I’m not sure what else I could have done to make it last longer..

I'm currently running the SealTool diagnostic test at home. It said it would take 1-4 hours to complete, so I'll copy/paste the diagnostic report when it's all done
 
I agree two years is a short life span for a drive. It looks as though you did take good care of the drive and I don't know what more you could have done to prolong the life of the drive. Apparently the drive only has a two year warranty so I hope the drive has not failed.
 
You can try running chkdsk from a command prompt and see if that gives you any more details than SeaTools. Could be a good sign that it passed.
Does the drive disappear on every boot or is it random? Have you tried another SATA port or different power connector from the PSU?
 

MidnightDistort

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It could be a bad hard drive, some die quicker than others, even when there is no S.M.A.R.T. errors, sometimes drives just do not function well enough, even S.M.A.R.T. may not detect these problems. I have an older WD drive where i generally have to check the bios during startup to see if it's there and let it sit before restarting because the drive takes a minute to warm up. Do you hear any weird noises coming from the drive when it does not show up in bios or your PC? A couple of reasons why this problem might exist. Either the drive is struggling to turn on from a cold boot, a short somewhere on the board maybe, loose connections, bad motherboard sata port, power connection or your PSU is not providing enough power during a cold boot.
 


The screen that you describe is the opening screen. On the left side of the screen there is a column of white boxes, one next to each drive in your system. Click on the box next to the ST1000DM003 and a green check mark will light up above the drive list with the words "BASIC TESTS" next to it. Just hover your mouse cursor over Basic Tests to see a list of tests that you can run on your HDD, such as : SMART test, Short Generic, Long Generic, Short Drive Self Test, etc. The "SMART Test" and the "Long Generic" would be the best ones for you to run.

Yogi

 

TheTenaciousOtaku

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I am trying to run chkdsk via command prompt, and I get the following message,

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Chkdsk may run if this volume is dismounted first. ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID. Would you like to force a dismount of this volume? (Y/N)

I don't I got that exact message last time I ran it. The whole "All handles would be invalid" business sounds worrying
 


You can schedule chkdsk to run the next time you reboot your computer by doing the following:
1) Right click on the drive
2) Click on Properties
3) Click on the Tools tab
4) Click on Check now under Error-checking
5) By default "Automatically fix file system errors" is checked, you may want to also check "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"
6) Click on Start
7) You will be asked if you would like for it to start the next time you restart or reboot your computer
I have run chkdsk and forced a dismount before with no problems. However, doing the above may be safer.
 

TheTenaciousOtaku

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I don't understand what dismount means? Will whatever it is be mounted again?
 
Yes, the drive would be mounted again. After running chkdsk you would simply reboot your computer and all should be well.
"It means that chkdsk has ended access to the drive by any other program or
process. A handle is a number, a reference to a particular file on disk or
in memory.

So, if for example you had an open Word doc that was on that drive, Word
would lose access to it when chkdsk invalidated the handles.

chkdsk needs exclusive access to the drive to operate. So it allows you to
dismount the volume. Alternately, if it can't it will offer to schedule the
scan at next boot."
Source: http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/all-opened-handles-volume-would-then-invalid-t2695109.html

In other words you should close any open programs before running chkdsk at a command prompt.
If you choose to do it from a command prompt you would type something like this: chkdsk /f C: (replace the C with the drive letter you want to check)