Problems with hard drives

[Conroyale]

I’ve been having problems with my computer for the past six months. I have one hard drive that sometimes doesnt register on my computer and when it does, my computer to freeze pretty regularly. Another one of mine isn’t letting my computer connect to the internet and when it is connected, it runs at a snail’s pace compared to the other one. What can I do to resolve this issue?

[Bruce]

let’s stick to one issue at a time.
in fact maybe a Mod can split this thread into another for the slow internet issue and leave this one for the hard drive issue.

so this hard drive, is it internal (as is C:\ drive) or external (as in a USB caddy)?
assuming you mean external - have you tried another USB ports?
does it also fail to sometimes be recognised on other PC’s?
make/model/age?
when it doesn’t get recognised, what do you do to make it recognised - unplug/replug?, reboot the PC?

[Conroyale]

It is my internal drive. When my main one doesn’t work, it boots up straight into the BIOS menu. When I look through all the specs, motherboard, CPU, and RAM, they’re all there except it says I don’t have any storage, which I assume is my HDD.

[Bruce]

in that case, it’s a safe bet that your drive is failing and should be replaced ASAP.
and while the sun shines - do a backup.

[Conroyale]

I just installed the HDSentinel and it says that my HDD is perfectly fine. I posted this problem to another forum earlier in the year and when I built my computer I just transferred this HDD from my old computer to this one. Someone said that was the problem due to it having the wrong drivers. If this is, in fact, the problem, how would I go about adjusting the drivers? I tried to figure it out myself and got nowhere…

[Bruce]

can you post the SMART values for that drive?
doubt it’s a driver problem as hard drives don’t have them (per say), they are builtin and not something that you need to look after.
in BIOS, how is the drive setup, as AHCI or IDE or RAID?
so you removed this drive from the old PC and used it as the new PC’s C:\ drive?
did you reinstall Windows? what about the motherboards drivers from the new motrherboard driver CD?

and as asked earlier…
what is the make/model of the drive?
what do you do to fix the problem currently when it happens?

[Conroyale]

I looked through the command prompt that my HDD is okay. I can get the values in a bit after I check BIOS real quick.
Yes, I removed the drive from the old PC and it is my main HDD. I did not reinstall windows. And I just downloaded the chipset drivers for the motherboard.
I know it is a 1TB Seagate HDD. The properties say ST1000DM003-1ER162.
Honestly, I have no idea how to fix it. It seems to work and not work at random. I unplug the drive and I’ve even switched power ports and even a different cord the connects to the motherboard, but it doesn’t fix it.
After I check the BIOS, I will post whether it is RAID, AHCI, or IDE.

[Conroyale]

It is AHCI. I have the option to do RAID or AHCI.

[Conroyale]

When I tried to switch to RAID, it just booted right back into BIOS but the AHCI works.

[jmarket]

It won’t boot into RAID because you don’t have the drives set up as RAID. Once a drive(s) is setup as RAID, it will only boot in RAID mode unless wiped.

You have a Seagate. I have a very special tool specifically designed for Seagate drives I would like you to run.

Go ahead and download SeaTools for Windows.

Install it and run it. You’ll be greeted with a drive list. Go ahead and select the drive and go to Basic Tests > Short Drive Self Test. If it passes, move on to Short Generic. If that passes, run Long Generic. Note that Long Generic will take an hour or so, so run it overnight.

[Conroyale]

The short drive self test failed

[jmarket]

That means your hard drive is failing. I would advise replacing it as soon as possible and back up your data.

[Conroyale]

Awesome, thank you so much for the prompt responses. I’ll get to replacing my HDD as soon as I can.

[jmarket]

You’re most welcome

[Conroyale]

All right, so I got a new hard drive and got all my data switched over. I ran those tests you told me about, it passed the short drive self test, but while running the short generic test, my computer froze on me. Is there some other things I need to do to finish installing the new drive or is the freezing computer from a different problem?