SATA HDD recognised by BIOS intermittently

[Arloch]

Hi all,

I have been getting errors during boot after "Verifying DMI Pool Data...", usually its "Disk Boot Failure, please insert system disk and press enter", but sometimes it just says "Error loading operating system."

I noticed that my hard drive was only being detected sometimes in my BIOS - it used to detect it in 1 out of 10 boots, but it has been getting worse and doesn't seem to be booting at all now. When it successfully detected it, the computer would boot fine and I would have no problems - no freezes, no crashes or anything.

The strange thing is that when it can't detect it, it doesn't say "None" in BIOS like it does for the empty SATA channels, it's just a blank space instead... which suggests it knows that something is there but it can't work out what.

A while ago I had an external Seagate HD but the case broke, so I made it internal - and that one is always detected 100% of the time without fail.

I have tried the following:
- Different power cables to the HDD.
- Different SATA cables.
- Different SATA ports on the motherboard.
- Running the Western Digital diagnostic tool (It says everything is fine)
- Resetting to default settings in BIOS.

I'm pretty sure the WD HDD is failing, and am considering replacing it, despite the diagnostic tool saying it is fine. A few weeks before this started to happen, boot would sometimes show errors like "BootMGR is missing" and things like that, I repaired bootmgr etc but it made no difference, and now that problem has turned into this - a sometimes invisible HDD in BIOS that stops it from booting.

If anyone could offer some advice or suggestions before I try buying a new HDD, it would be greatly appreciated!!

 

[Arloch]

Actually, I will try to run Spinrite overnight to see if that helps. Although I'm concerned that it also might not be able to always detect the drive... so that will be interesting to see.

 

[Flareside]

Have you tried running chkdsk /f on the drive?

Flare

 

[Arloch]

Have you tried running chkdsk /f on the drive?

Flare

Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't think of that. Unfortunately it didn't help Still have problems booting from a full power-off.

 

[Flareside]

When it was running chkdsk did you see a lot of fix messages? If so you might need to get get it to read with your restart deal save your data cause that drive is probably toast.

Flare

 

[Arloch]

Actually I didn't see any fix messages, which is strange because it makes me think there's nothing wrong with the HDD... but since the other one is always detected, I really can't see what else it could be!

 

[smorizio]

if the drive spindel motor is going it may not be spinning up at power on and the bios is timming the drive out. with old drive if it not the motor then it could be the lube inside the drive is going bad or the drive controller chip. motors if you put your hand on the drive at boot if it spins up and down the motor going. if the drive spins but the heads are not moving then the contoller may be going bad.