HDD 's disappearing act, it's magic?!!

[schiejeve]

Hello,
I looked around on this forum and found that many built their own pc.
Or at least have some background for an opinion.
Don't know if you can help but your opinion is appriceated.

Recently I upgraded my pc to W8, and a problem raised.
Normally Utorrent runs on my pc like a 7/11 and I could do anything what I wanted,no problem.
Now with W8 , when Utorrent is active and I would watch any file(movie or OVA, serie), be it on Mediaplayer, VLC or MPC-HC, one of my internal hdd disappears completly from my pc.
The only way to get it back connected to the system in to reboot.
The hdd that disappears contains 90% of my torrent files, so basicly 90% of my torrents shut down becaus there is no data path to contract the data.
If the file a was watching was located in the same hdd, the player stops(no data).

Utorrent blames Nvidia and W8.
I tried another tracker Vuze but the same result.
I can hardly believe it has to do with the amount of data you put on a hdd.
That was one of the last remarks I got from Utorrent trown to Windows.

My pc spec.

Windows 8 Pro
Processor  AMD Phenom(tm) IIx4 970 processor 3.5GHz
RAM 4 GB
x64 processor
OCZ-Vertex2 ata device
Samsung HD103SJ ata device
WDC WD 10EARS_00MWVB0 ATA device

I'm NOT a high tech, like some of you.
Don't know if its enough but ask and you shall be answerd.

And sorry if this post is placed wrong.
Looked around but this was fairly my best option.

Thanks to all.

[Belmakar]

Well... win8 does have some obscure bugs (today, on a coworkers pc, suddenly windows started to render the mouse cursor 30 pixels right from its actual position, until they rebooted)...

however, did you make sure it's no hardware failure (like a loose connection, or a dying hard drive or sth like that)? (sounds like some weird graphics card driver bug, though)

[Freedom Kira]

however, did you make sure it's no hardware failure (like a loose connection, or a dying hard drive or sth like that)? (sounds like some weird graphics card driver bug, though)

I'd be more inclined to believe it's a hardware issue if it started happening before he installed Windows 8. So yeah, most likely some stupid bug somewhere.

[kitamesume]

+1
other than software/driver issues there are three other factors that needs to be cleared.

• harddrisk works fine on another PC
• connection is not loose + theres no excessive vibrations
• powersupply is clean of noises

on the other hand, is it strictly that one HDD or does it affect other storage devices? (e.g. your SSD or a USB drive, other harddisks too)
it may be the HDD having problems or the motherboard slot where the HDD is plugged (SATA slots) is having issues, try replugging it on another slot.

[vuzedome]

Loose SATA connector?
If no, HDD loosing power without reason?
If yes, loose power connector?
If no, bad PSU?
If no, swap that HDD out.

[Tiffanys]

I had it happen to me with Vista, but it wasn't a hardware problem. It was a Windows problem. I forget what I had to do to fix it...

You can see if this helps: http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/276295-external-hard-drive-doesnt-show-up-my-computer-but-does-device-manager.html

[megido-rev.M]

It shows up in the BIOS right?

[schiejeve]

Thanks for all your opinions.
Much appreciated.
Will look into this weekend, not today.
I'don't think my pc can handle a 2 floor drop at the moment and thats where I'm at.
I'll pm the solution sunday if possible.
Again, thanks.

[nstgc]

If you are worried about a software problem, get a live version of some Linux distro (I also advise Mint) and see if you can see the partition. If it doesn't, its hardware. If it does, its Windows 8 being the piece of shit we all know it is.

[Belove]

Just to add a couple more hardware issue possibilities:
Controller card/chip
Overheating/insufficient cooling

Go to the HD manufacturer website and find a SMART monitoring tool - that's the HD's self-reporting about whether it thinks it's failing, what it's internal temp is, etc.

Almost any peripheral will shut down if it overheats, including the controller or the drive.

After the drive does this and you reboot, the first thing you should do to minimize data corruption is right click on the drive icon, go to Tools, and choose Check for Errors (or whatever they call it in Windows 8 ); check mark next to "Fix errors" -- This will run CHKDSK on the drive.  No need to do a surface scan, which takes forever, it will just clean up the state of the disk writes it had been doing when it crashed so everything is consistent (files and file allocation tables, etc.).

There are tools like Spinrite (there must a be a free alternative too...hmm offhand, some pc manufacturer's put similar diagnostic software on a special partition you can boot to) that you can burn to a CD or DVD and boot from and have it stress test the disk, this will give you a good idea if the disk is failing since it will have nothing to do with W8.

Good luck.