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I have a Seagate 2TB HDD (about 3 years old) and I've started having strange issues since installing a new PSU (my previous one was on the blink as it kept intermittently restarting my PC). 1 day after my new PSU installation, my drive partitions associated with my 2TB drive intermittently disappear from "My Computer" but re-appear upon restart. This has been happening every day for a week now. I've tried using different power rails but not different SATA cables so far.
I've installed a few tools to help get an understanding of what's going on with my drive, but it looks like all desktop based S.M.A.R.T tools don't show ANY attributes for my 2TB HDD - at least not consistently (see next paragraph). When running the Seagate bootable disc checker tool in DOS/Linux mode, the S.M.A.R.T status is OK for the drive. I've ran an Extended Test (taking 5 hours) in the tool with no problems detected.
Today however, I noticed in the "ActiveSMART" tool that although the attributes couldn't be read, it started reporting that there were abnormalities in the attributes. Meaning that some had descriptions (the others were blank) and that next to the descriptions where the status "BAD". Lots of popups of "Imminent failure" etc. All my other drives have their S.M.A.R.T attributes displayed correctly.
My question is: What exactly is going on here?
(And yes, I am backing up my most important files right now...)
Christopher Carswell
Posted 2014-11-24T08:22:28.160
Reputation: 103
Since you've installed a PSU, you've been in the system case, have you ensured you haven't nudged a SATA cable, etc. I.e start by rechecking all the physical connections. Are you using a Windows box? If so download crystaldiskinfo. If that checks out, then swap the power cable to another disk and see if that disk then starts acting up, if so it wont be your disk but the power cable / PSU. Anything in Event Viewer? – rism – 2014-11-24T08:42:05.937
Thanks, rism! I have swapped power rails with my other HDDs (it's on a dedicated one now) and also swapped a SATA cable/port. The S.M.A.R.T attributes are now showing correctly. Now only time will tell whether I will lose the drives or not - but so far so good :) – Christopher Carswell – 2014-11-25T07:24:16.333
rism, it looks like it's all sorted now. Please add your comment as an answer and I'll mark it as correct. Thanks for all your assistance! – Christopher Carswell – 2014-11-27T09:08:38.623