hello i have 1 SATA2 hard disk drive which works very well when detected the problem started few months ago , and it happens only after i shutdown my computer. the problem is that when i turn on the pc , mostly it will not detect the hard disk and will not boot into windows . it will need several reboots for the computer to detect it , but when its finally detected, the computer works just fine. it took about 40 minutes of rebootings today for the computer to detect it ! i tried connecting the drive to different sata slots in the motherboard , i tried 2 other sata cables (1 of them is the 1 used for the dvd drive , which is always recognized) , and i tried to disconnect the dvd drive and connect the hard disk in the same slot using the same cable without connecting the dvd at all .. i could feel the hard disk running when the pc is on (i touched it and felt a lite vibration) i tried hiren's disk and it didn't detect the drive as well all the testings tells that the fault is from the hard disk , but what could be the problem since it sometimes get detected and work very well? any idea ? any help would be appreciated
it sounds like your hard drive might be the culprit. yeah when it works it works great, but to spend 40 minutes to get it working is ridiculous. its possible that there might be something wrong with the hard drive controller board. (the little green board on your hard drive) the best way to test this is to see if a different sata hard drive responds the same way. as cheap as hard drives are now it wouldn't be unreasonable to get a new one. if your worried about your info, you could still clone the drive to the new, that is if your patient enough to get it working first. this is the best test at this point. you have already tried some other options like changing cables, channels, etc. if you find out your hard drive is bad, check with the manufacture if there is any warranty. maybe you can send it in and get a re certified replacement.
i found this: http://datacent.com/datarecovery/hdd/western_digital/WD3200AAKS-75L9A0 it sounds the firmware got corrupted .. i'll check my warranty .. thanks for the help
I am having a similar problem. But mine doesn't take as many restarts to boot. On the first startup it doesn't detect the HD and then it restarts itself and has a 5 sec countdown to let you boot from disk by hitting any key or it will automatically boot from next device. But if you leave it alone it will boot from the HD and has no problems, but it keeps happening everytime computer shutsdown completely, and only one time each time.
