HDD failing ?

[karandpr]

My 250 GB SATA Seagate HDD is failing it seems
Third replacement in Two years .
However unlike the previous two failures ,this time SMART,Short and Long DST (Seatools bootable CD) didn't detect any fault .
The problem I face is ,HDD gets uninstalled and reinstalled randomly .
Today the drive has become inaccessible .
Ironically I planned my Backup only Today .
I have strong suspicions ,this is a driver issue .
Any Ideas or suggestions will be helpful .

 

[SUroot]

Well if you have a caddy and another computer, you could mount it. If it works it rules out platter and controller (although its doubtful its platter anyway) and points to connection or drivers

 

[karandpr]

Nope I dont have either . My old PATA is more robust than the SATA .Bummer .
Ironically ALL MY LINI ISO are in SATA .
The Only ISO on PATA Is Natty which I will be using later .I am not too keen on dling Oneric . Hope I can salvage the data somehow .(Will make dd's )

 

[SUroot]

Are we talking desktop?

You could replace the HDD then try mount it as slave.

If its just data, run a live cd and get the data if you can?

 

[johnlgalt]

It could be any of a few issues - bad PSU, bad SATA connections, Onboard controller issues, etc.

Even without a caddy, if you have a friend who has a computer that has a free SATA controller (Preferably a SATA II, as taht can handle both SATA I and II devices), you could test the drive and see if anything is wrong with it - I'm better no since SMART doesn't detect a failure.

When you say it becomes disconnected, are you getting error messages at all?

Also, what OS are you running on the machine? Do you have AHCI enabled?

 

[karandpr]

Yes we are talking desktop .(Forgot to mention it )
Bad PSU and Faulty driver are top probables .
Checked the connections and replaced SATA cables .
I am running Win 7 x86 ultimate on my PATA .
AHCI is enabled
What I meant disconnected is the drive dissappears (As in unistalled or umount in linux )
After a short while it reappears as new disk drive .

I am currently using Ubuntu Natty from my pendrive
I have 3 internal HDDs .1 PATA ,1 SATA 250 GB and 1 SATA 1TB.

I will check the HDD on another computer .

 

[karandpr]

Backup completed in Natty .
No funny stuff while copying .
No failed mounts .
No Nothing .
Strange Stuff .

Surface Test clear
All tests under Natty .No errors found .
All tests under seatools dos .No errors .
dumped zeroes all over the hard disk No error
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb
Read speed /write speed .No errors .
Bummer

 

[karandpr]

I think Wiping the HDD ,did the trick or something (One of X methods )
HDD is working ok now in windows .
Thanks for you inputs

 

[johnlgalt]

Yes we are talking desktop .(Forgot to mention it )
Bad PSU and Faulty driver are top probables .
Checked the connections and replaced SATA cables .
I am running Win 7 x86 ultimate on my PATA .
AHCI is enabled
What I meant disconnected is the drive dissappears (As in unistalled or umount in linux )
After a short while it reappears as new disk drive .

I am currently using Ubuntu Natty from my pendrive
I have 3 internal HDDs .1 PATA ,1 SATA 250 GB and 1 SATA 1TB.

I will check the HDD on another computer .

Backup completed in Natty .
No funny stuff while copying .
No failed mounts .
No Nothing .
Strange Stuff .

Surface Test clear
All tests under Natty .No errors found .
All tests under seatools dos .No errors .
dumped zeroes all over the hard disk No error
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb
dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb
Read speed /write speed .No errors .
Bummer

I think Wiping the HDD ,did the trick or something (One of X methods )
HDD is working ok now in windows .
Thanks for you inputs

I had a feeling AHCI was involved as you were losing and then re-finding teh drive. it was either a driver issue, or it could have been something more sinister - such as malware (as in malware attempting to write to the MBR and being blocked and isolated by an anti-malware client, that then isolated the entire drive long enough for Windows to say "Oh, by the way, that disk you were planning on copying from? I just took it down."

At any rate, glad it's worked out for ya - for now. PSU tester may not be a bad thing to invest in, though.... just in case.

 

[Vehtemas]

My 250 GB SATA Seagate HDD is failing it seems
Third replacement in Two years .
However unlike the previous two failures ,this time SMART,Short and Long DST (Seatools bootable CD) didn't detect any fault .
The problem I face is ,HDD gets uninstalled and reinstalled randomly .
Today the drive has become inaccessible .
Ironically I planned my Backup only Today .
I have strong suspicions ,this is a driver issue .
Any Ideas or suggestions will be helpful .

For future reference I would pay a company like SugarSync or some other to backup your data.

I pay SugarSync $50 a year for 40 gigs of data space and unlimited PC links.

If something happens and my data disappears or computers crash I simply resync the data and it all gets redownloaded, very reliable.

 

[johnlgalt]

$40 a year is not bad at all. I might look into that - I just blew 3 HDs away a couple of months ago, but I'm trying to buy a replacement HD that matches the others, then gonna install the exact same firmware and swap out boards ... and see if I can't do a little hardware hijinxing on the dead drives lol.