Whats up with my hard drive?

Westindieman

This is a Western Digital red which went out of warranty 2015, it was already previously replaced under warranty about 2015.
When I connect it via SATA to the mother board, it is inaccessible and registering 0.00kb. If I connect it using a USB/SATA adapter I can use the drive as normal. I have attached screenshots where is is disk 3 in both scenarios.

                                                                                                                                       

Backspace

It's not assigned a drive letter. Partition and format the drive and assign a drive ID.

Westindieman

Its has been partitioned per the 2nd image when it connects via USB. Its not allowing any manipulation of the drive when connected by SATA, you didn't read the post but thanks.

chrisloudon

Very strange! Does the windows disk management service report the same?

Maybe check BIOS settings. Sata ports can usually be configured between IDE / AHCI / Raid. Try changing these to see if that kicks it into shape.

Alternativly, can you plug the drive into another PCs SATA port and see what happens or even the other way round. Plug another SATA drive into the offending PC. Have you tried different ports?

Good Luck
Chris

Westindieman

Thanks Chris, yes its the same in wdm. The computer it should go in in my home media computer serving movies and music to tvs and stereos but it disappeared so the above pictures is when connected it to my desktop PC to diagnose it. A few days later I went back to it and connected by SATA to the desk top and it displayed fine so I put it back into the homeserver computer where again it doesn't show up at all. I put it back into the PC where it kept appearing briefly then disappearing again.

chrisloudon

Well, unless there is anyone else here who can shed some light on this one I think the drive is on its way out. I've seen many HDD errors in my life but this one has me stumped as well.

If you have some time, I recall many HDD manufacturers have some low level utilities that you might consider using. The chances are you will need to create a bootable usb with the utility on to run it but it might shed some light onto the issue.

If it works when connected via USB then get as much off the drive as you can before replacing.

C

Backspace

Use it as an USB drive then and get a new one to replace it.