Second hard drive disappears

[Sitrus]

Howdy fellers
I bought a craigslist tier computer off of craigslist earlier this year.
Despite only half of the 8gb of ram working, I decided to keep the computer instead of taking up the guy's offer to return it for a full refund. Smart.

Anyway, it has a 250gb HDD for the OS and program files, and a 1TB HDD where I install games and keep video recordings etc.
Recently the terabyte hard drive has been deciding to disappear while I'm using it. In the middle of, say, Garry's Mod the game will crash because its on the hard drive that no longer exists.

Every time I reboot the computer the hard drive sticks around for awhile, but usually after an hour or two it goes away.
Any of you guys know what's going on?

[Ad Bot]

[ZSNO]

Make sure everything is connected well inside the computer. The SATA to the motherboard and hard drive, power connector to the hard drive, etc.

[Sitrus]

I've been reconnecting HDD to PSU a few times, but I don't believe I've checked the HDD to mobo connection.
I'll check.

[IkeTheGeneric]

I have no idea if this relates to your issue but when I got my computer my secondary hard drive was disappearing due to the power plan setting "Turn off hard disk after x amount of minutes idle" was on and set to ~22 minutes by default.

What operating system were you using? I was using windows 7 and it was under the "Advanced Power Plan Settings"

[shitlord]

run a disk check program after following the suggestions already posted in this thread

[K3k0m@n]

I had the same problem and it was just loose connections

[Sitrus]

I've checked the connections, done the power setting thing, and ran chkdsk more than a few times but that was only when the computer essentially made me do it on a restart.
Maybe if I initiate it myself I'll get better results.

[shitlord]

leave the computer open, wait for the hdd to disappear, unplug it and plug it back in during operation and see what happens

[TheBlackParrot]

leave the computer open, wait for the hdd to disappear, unplug it and plug it back in during operation and see what happens

isn't this a bad thing to do tho

[shitlord]

isn't this a bad thing to do tho

not if its disappearing
 

[shitlord]

note: i mean unplug the data sata/ide cable, not the power cable

[Darryl McKoy]

not if its disappearing

Even if it's not registering, for all we know right now it could still be reading or writing. Doing what you suggested is a terrible idea.

[shitlord]

reading and writing what
if its not being told to do anything by the operating system, what is it doing?

[K3k0m@n]

reading and writing what
if its not being told to do anything by the operating system, what is it doing?

I was going to argue against this but I noticed that only my main drive had frequent write-read stuff going on, the rest of my drives stayed at 0%

[Darryl McKoy]

reading and writing what
if its not being told to do anything by the operating system, what is it doing?

If it's doing anything at all and he unplugs it, there's a high risk he'll corrupt data on the drive. What exactly were you hoping to find out by getting him to do that?