What is wrong with my drive?

[Musabi]

So I just got my i7 parts minus my gtx480's today, put it all together and the magical first boot of glory worked! MUHAHAHA

There is only one problem: My 1TB Drive is.... being weird. I cant access it at all.

The thing is, it is still being detected in BIOS and it is still being detected in Computer Management>Disk Management!

Where my other storage drives are either saying: Healthy (Primary Partition) or Healthy (Active, Primary Partition) my 1TB drive is saying: Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition). I apologize if the answer is on here somewhere, but I have searched high and low on these forums and through google. I hope someone can help!

[Soultribunal]

Primary Partition should mean it is a bootable device. System Should mean there is an OS installed on it. Healthy should mean its good to go!

I may be wrong but I think thats the way it is.

Just checked my Twin Drives on this computer and the one with the OS says Healthy (System) and is Blue (Primary Partition).

Hope that helps,

ST

[Musabi]

Thanks ST! I just realized I should have been more clear in my first post (I just edited it), but there hasn't been an OS installed on there for about 6 months and 3-4 formats, and it was working perfectly fine in my last rig. I REALLY hope there isn't a problem with it or this will be the 3rd time I will have had to RMA this particular drive.

[Musabi]

Perhaps putting a drive letter on it might help... lol. Well, its working now! Thanks!

[AkG]

I NEVER trust "smart" readings on their own. They rarely show anything but good or Healthy until the drive is REALLY going south. It occasionally catches a dying drive but not that often and only IF you USE the info it provides properly. IF the drive is acting wonky. I'd DL the mfg'ers test and run the full or extended test. See what it has to say. Other thing I would do is replace the cable. A wonky cable can cause really weird things too, and if possible try a dif sata port. Could be a bad port.

THEN (assuming the extended test comes back clean) check the SMART numbers and write em down. Then run a hard full format on it (not a quick format). Then check the "SMART" readings again. See how many reallocated sectors, retries etc it has now. Write down all the info. THEN run an hour or three IOMeter test suite on the full drive. REALLY stress that drive to make sure it is good. If it locks up...the drive is bad. If its alive, check SMART and see what the NEW numbers are. IF they go up....Id be tempted to yank the drive and replace it.

IF it passes all that...then its most likely not the HDD at fault, nor a faulty port nor a faulty cable. What kind of 1TB drive is it? Is it a Green? Is it a Seagate (if so what model. Is it one of the dreaded bios brickin models)?

[Musabi]

Originally Posted by AkG

I NEVER trust "smart" readings on their own. They rarely show anything but good or Healthy until the drive is REALLY going south. It occasionally catches a dying drive but not that often and only IF you USE the info it provides properly. IF the drive is acting wonky. I'd DL the mfg'ers test and run the full or extended test. See what it has to say. Other thing I would do is replace the cable. A wonky cable can cause really weird things too, and if possible try a dif sata port. Could be a bad port.

THEN (assuming the extended test comes back clean) check the SMART numbers and write em down. Then run a hard full format on it (not a quick format). Then check the "SMART" readings again. See how many reallocated sectors, retries etc it has now. Write down all the info. THEN run an hour or three IOMeter test suite on the full drive. REALLY stress that drive to make sure it is good. If it locks up...the drive is bad. If its alive, check SMART and see what the NEW numbers are. IF they go up....Id be tempted to yank the drive and replace it.

IF it passes all that...then its most likely not the HDD at fault, nor a faulty port nor a faulty cable. What kind of 1TB drive is it? Is it a Green? Is it a Seagate (if so what model. Is it one of the dreaded bios brickin models)?

I feel really bad having you write all that out AKG, but I just wasn't looking hard enough... The 1TB drive didn't have a drive letter assigned to it and therefore couldn't do anything really!

NCIX.com - Buy Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA2 3.5IN 8.5MS 7200RPM 32MB Hard Drive OEM *3YR MFR Warranty* - ST31000528AS In Canada.

It is that drive exactly, so yes, it is the BIOS brickin models. How I wish I got a WD Black over this... Both times it has died it would at least, VERY slowly, let me get the info off of the drive. I'm talking 10min/MB! And yes, I was about to use SeaTools but I caught the drive letter thing first! Next time I suspect I have a bad drive I'm going to do what you say for sure though. Thanks!

[AkG]

NP Musabi. Glad to hear it was something extremely easy. :)

[ipaine]

I'm glad it worked out for you as well. I have had to deal with these darn bricking 7200.11 drives and just got a replacement for a replacement and still have 2 more here waiting for me to RMA.

At least seatools is a decent little hdd diag.