[SOLVED] Second Hard Drive Has Disappeared (Windows 8.1)

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
leachyboy77

leachyboy77

Honorable
Mar 9, 2014
16
0
10,520
Alright, I'm typing this out of desperation, I have absolutely no idea what to do anymore. I'm sorry for the life story, but I feel like I need to give as many details as possible to help someone figure out what's going wrong.

I have two drives in my computer, an SSD and an HDD. The SSD is a Samsung Evo 840 250GB, and the HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 2TB. About two months ago, my computer decided to stop recognizing that the HDD was connected at random times. My HDD is where I have many games installed, as well as the location of my save content for all of my ProTools work. Every once in a while, I would get an error message from some program that I was trying to open, and I would investigate the problem to find out that the HDD had disappeared from the My PC section of Windows Explorer. Usually, shutting the computer down and turning it back on would fix the issue (not restarting, if I ever chose the Restart option, the problem would persist). Shutting it down would usually take between 3-5 minutes as opposed to the normal few seconds. Powering back on would be the normal few seconds, and the hard drive would reappear.

A few hours ago, once again the hard drive had disappeared without my knowledge. I was using ProTools at the time. I had started up a new session and went to make a single edit (I trimmed an audio clip to make it shorter). As soon as the edit was made, I got an error message saying something about "AAE" running out of memory. I had never seen this before, so I tried to keep working, but ProTools then froze. I checked Windows Explorer to see what happened, and sure enough, the HDD was gone. I panicked a bit, because I know how intensive ProTools is, and figured this was slightly more serious than normal because the folder the program was saving everything to essentially just disappeared mid-work.

I turned the computer off and turned it back on. Turning it off took about 5 minutes, and this time, turning it back on took 5 minutes as well. I saw the blue Windows logo for a while, but I didn't get the spinning loading icon until about 2 or 3 minutes into the startup process. When I logged back in, the hard drive was still gone.

This prompted a panic research session. I have tried everything I could think of and everything I found online, from trying different SATA cables to switching the SATA ports, downloading Seagate's diagnostic software (it showed that it was connected and had no problems), checking Device Manager for driver issues (there weren't any, but the HDD doesn't show up in Device Manager), updating my BIOS (I have a Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H, didn't do anything). Nothing worked.

Can someone please attempt to help me? I'll be monitoring this thread with almost instant responses, as this needs to be figured out ASAP, and I really don't want this to be a dead drive problem, I've had this build for barely over a year.

It should also be said that in my many restart cycles, I also got a BSoD for DRIVER_STATE_POWER_FAILURE. After looking for a decent tutorial (and finding the Tom's Hardware one), I restarted the computer in Safe Mode and went into Device Manager, where apparently there was an issue with a driver for my monitor. Uninstalled the driver, restarted, and the BSoD never showed up again, but the startup process still took forever and the HDD was (and still is) not there.
 
Solution
leachyboy77
Took it out and tested it on my friend's build. Same things as on my computer, the drive didn't show up in his Windows Explorer, Device Manager or Disk Management. So it seems like the drive is the issue here, which is very unfortunate.
Do you happen to have an idea of what a decent price for recovery from an unresponsive hard drive would be? I looked at the Geek Squad website for a quick example, and they were saying $1,450+ which seems beyond astronomical (http://www.geeksquad.com/services/computers/data-recovery.aspx). I really have no context of what is cheap and what is expensive when it comes to this stuff.

Thank you very much for your help through this, I can't say this was a problem solved because my problem still exists, but I...
Sort by date Sort by votes
D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Hi there leachyboy77,

So you have changed both cables(power and SATA), SATA port and tested the drive with brand specific testing tool right?
Did you run both test? What did the results say? It is really strange that the drive is not recognized but you can test it.
You need to check whether it is recognized by Disk Management and how. It may have damaged partitions and/or file system. If this is the case, you may need to use some data/partition recovery software in order to retrieve the data that is stored on the drive.

If the drive is not recognized by Disk Management(and BIOS), it may be a good idea to attach the drive to another system and see whether the issue persists.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
leachyboy77

leachyboy77

Honorable
Mar 9, 2014
16
0
10,520
The drive is not seen by Disk Management either unfortunately.

I did forget to mention that I got rid of a potential issue. In my research, I had also found that some people were having issues with the drive turning off after a certain period of inactivity to save power, the default time being 20 minutes. I changed that to "Never," but the problem persisted.

I do have a friend who has his own build. How would I go about testing this with his computer? If I connect it to his system, and everything goes properly, will it just show up as a drive that already has content on it, or will it treat it as a brand new drive that has to be formatted before being able to access it?

Also, would you recommend taking this to a computer repair specialist, either Best Buy's Geek Squad or some local place? Because I admittedly don't have all the resources needed to do any data recovery. My SSD doesn't have enough space to accommodate anything I might pull off of the SSD.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
We are talking about an internal drive right? It this disconnecting/reconnecting thing sound a lot like some connection issue(both ends of cables and ports).

If you connect it to another system and everything goes ok(assuming that the issue is caused by your system but not the drive), it should appear as a drive that already has content on it(or at least recoverable one). You should not format it.
It is strange that the testing program recognized the drive but Disk Management does not. Also, this program should test the drive for errors(not indicate whether the drive is connected or not).
If the drive is not recognized by Disk Management on another machine as well, then I guess you should contact a data recovery company.

D_Know_WD :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
leachyboy77

leachyboy77

Honorable
Mar 9, 2014
16
0
10,520
Alright, I regret to say that the diagnostic program wasn't actually showing my Seagate drive, it was showing the Samsung SSD that was connected. I guess in my panicked state I read through it quickly and thought it said it was my Seagate HDD. I was using SeaTools for DOS and SeaTools for Windows, both downloaded from here: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

So now it turns out that the drive isn't being shown anywhere, which gives me even less hope. I don't understand how this happened all of a sudden. Yes, the disconnections were happening every once in a while, but a quick restart would fix them. Now it seems like there has been some sort of a catastrophic failure. Is there a reason that the startup and shut down processes are taking much longer now too? Is it the computer searching for the drive that used to be connected? I'm pretty much at a loss here.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
leachyboy77

leachyboy77

Honorable
Mar 9, 2014
16
0
10,520
Took it out and tested it on my friend's build. Same things as on my computer, the drive didn't show up in his Windows Explorer, Device Manager or Disk Management. So it seems like the drive is the issue here, which is very unfortunate.
Do you happen to have an idea of what a decent price for recovery from an unresponsive hard drive would be? I looked at the Geek Squad website for a quick example, and they were saying $1,450+ which seems beyond astronomical (http://www.geeksquad.com/services/computers/data-recovery.aspx). I really have no context of what is cheap and what is expensive when it comes to this stuff.

Thank you very much for your help through this, I can't say this was a problem solved because my problem still exists, but I guess I'll still mark it as solved.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
It is really bad that is not recognized on another system as well. :(
In this case, your only option will be to contact a data recovery company. The HDD should be opened up in a dust free environment. Also, you can't be sure what is wrong with it.
I can't really comment on how much they charge but the services that data recovery companies provide are not cheap ones. I know that most of the HDD manufacturers have their own data recovery services or some trusted data recovery partners. You can check that out in the website of your HDD's manufacturer.
It is possible that the HDD was already dying when you got it(as it is second hand). This is why it is always a good idea to test a second hand HDD before using it. The slow boot is most probably caused by the HDD as well. If you take it out, your system should boot just fine.

D_Know_WD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
leachyboy77

leachyboy77

Honorable
Mar 9, 2014
16
0
10,520
For the record, the drive wasn't second hand. It was brand new when I bought it. It was definitely old though, I placed the order in December of 2013, so it was definitely out of warranty.
And yes, the recovery charges for companies near me are astronomical, so I'm deciding to just suck it up. I've already bought another drive and installed it, and plan on taking my old drive to my campus's IT department, as they offer recovery for free (but I don't expect much, the IT department here has a poor reputation).
Removing the old drive did in fact speed up the booting and shut down processes. I think it's now time to buy an external drive for backup purposes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom