Hard Drive sometimes not recognized

[unr3al]

I'm using a Western Digital Caviar Green hard drive, 500GB; WD5000AADS-00L4B1

The problem I'm having, is that I suddenly have trouble getting the BIOS to recognize the drive. Detection takes an eternity and when it eventually succeeds the drive doesn't exist. Then I fiddle with the cables and voila it works like nothing was ever out of the ordinary. My 500GB Samsung drive has never had this trouble and I suspect spin up time might be at fault.

My motherboard is a Biostar TA770E with a 3GHz Athlon II 250 and 4GB Corsair XMS2 800MHz. I also have a Force3D ATi HD4850 1GB that draws all power from the PCI-express slot (no external power connector). Power supply is the so-called 470W Gigabyte Odin (400W continuous output, shame on you, Gigabyte). Power is no problem, I am running my GPU overclocked from 625MHz/900MHz to 680MHz/990MHz and CPU at 3.4GHz, with my memory just over 900MHz. Everything is stable and I haven't had any BSoDs during games or stress testing. No artefacts are visible in any game either, including RE5 that used to artefact my card left, right and center until I upped the PCI-e voltage from the board's default 75W to 125W.

Unfortunately, my WD drive is my primary boot drive, so every time I shut down (hard reboots doesn't have this effect, only complete shutdowns) I am stuck without a boot drive. I have struggled from 5 minutes to half an hour to get my PC to boot and the hard drive itself is completely healthy as well, according to SpeedFan's analysis of its S.M.A.R.T. data.

If someone has an idea on this, I would be quite glad... My PC is being transported 4 days a week and bootup now takes up to half an hour instead of half a minute, so you can understand if I'm a little frustrated!

 

[Emulex]

i have a junk motherboard i think similar (i avoid biostar/ecs like the plague). has a sempron 3100+. did the same thing. some days 100 power cycles and the bios would catch. if you let go for like 30 minutes it will post more info on the screen.

its a crap mobo or relationship (board to drive). i took the drive to another pc to rescue the data off it and its been fine ever since both as slave and boot.

you might try setting the 150mb/s jumper if it has one.

in my case this boxen sits in a lonely corner as it only needed a reboot for security patches and its was my old htpc. having to power cycle it 1,20,50,100 times when you need it is maddening (think kid wants to watch tv).

 

[unr3al]

I've had this board since February and I can honestly say it doesn't give me any trouble (plus it has a load of solid caps around the CPU, great for the price!). The board itself I cannot blame for the problem, since it hasn't had trouble detecting the Samsung drive even once. All my drives are SATA, including my two DVDRW drives (one ASUS and one Samsung) and none of them have ever failed to be detected. Thats why I say it must be the HDD spin-up time at fault. I will see what jumpers there are and what I can set on the HDD itself. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Emulex]

smart would indicate a problem if it was startup failure

 

[unr3al]

Thats why I say it must be the time the drive takes to spin up thats the problem. re-checking with SpeedFan shows that the WD drive has a reading of 190, while the Samsung gives 85. I don't know what that means but there's a huge difference, thats all I know. Still going to check on the jumpers etc tomorrow.

 

[unr3al]

Okay, update: I can't find any settings for 150mb/s and there are hardly any jumpers on the board (bar CMOS reset and USB power); the same thing happened again this morning but this time I just let it sit a couple of minutes after it failed to read the drive and then did two hard reboots. Voila, WD drive registered. Confusing? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. I am going to switch from the WD to the Samsung as boot drive as soon as possible (reinstall reinstall reinstall ugh) and that should also raise my Windows Experience Index from the awful score that I have at the moment (CPU 6.7, memory 7.2, desktop aero gfx 7.3, 3d gaming etc 7.3, primary hard disk - 5.9...). In raw numbers, CrystalDiskMark measured the Samsung to be up to 50% faster than the WD! I'm not a big Samsung fan (having lost several of their CD and DVD drives in the past) but this also means that my media files will end up on the WD, IMO the more reliable drive where lifetime is concerned. And this will give me the opportunity to see if the WD drive becomes visible a while after bootup. since SATA is hot-swappable and if the drive takes too long to "wake up", Windows should find it, am I correct?

 

[RebateMonger]

Windows doesn't like failing disks, whether they are the boot disk or even a secondary USB disk. If there are problems reading the disk on boot, it'll likely delay your Windows boot until Windows gives up on the disk. At least that's what happens with XP or 2003.

 

[FishAk]

Then I fiddle with the cables and voila it works like nothing was ever out of the ordinary.

Have you swapped cables between the drives, to rule out the cable? If fiddling with the cables makes the drive respond, I would aim in that direction.

 

[unr3al]

I've used four different cables on the drive; but as you will see in my last message, I don't even open the chassis anymore; I just let it sit for a while and it works... Idiotic but right now its my quickest solution lol

 

[unr3al]

I don't know what I did or didn't do, but suddenly the drive doesn't have problems with detection any more. Will update if there are any changes, but it started up twice without missing the drive now. And I mean a cold start. Thanks for the suggestions and ideas I got from you guys.

 

[unr3al]

Still the same, I'm as confused as ever. Twice now it started up without problems. It seems like it doesn't like a "cold" start. Maybe I need some antifreeze . . . ? LoL

 

[kalrith]

My guess is that the drive is failing. I'd back it up ASAP and replace it.

 

[unr3al]

I've somehow sorted out the problem. It seems if I allow the power to flow through all components (I plug in the power cables and turn on the socket and power supply and leave it for 5 minutes or so) the drive gets detected without issues. I haven't heard of anything like this in my 12 years of PC experience. Weird lol I'm beginning to think the power supply is at fault (in fact that was my first suspect but I ruled it out for some reason I can't remember) and I might just buy a new one in a few months' time. This PSU is much to weak anyway.