hard disk 'disappear'

Hi my new seagate barracuda 7200.10 160GB hard drive (around two month)sometimes disappear from My Computer when windows it is running. My windows will experience brief heavy lag and then the harddisk will just disappear from My Computer; it is also gone from Computer Management and BIOS. Plugging it into another SATA port does not help. After a day my BIOS suddenly detected it again after a reboot; it appear in My Computer automatically with the data still there. Today the same thing happened again and I am still unable to make it appear.

I am running windows XP SP2 and ga-ep35-ds3 motherboard. The seagate disk was my C drive but it got corrupted last month; I plugged in my old drive, booted windows from it and formatted the seagate disk and using it as a data drive.

May I know what would be the possible problems? Could it be a power failure or incorrect settings?

Thanks in advance.

that could be a small handful of things. could be a bad connection between the disk and the motherboard, could be a bad connection between the disk and the power supply, or the disk could just be dying all together. I've been through several computer supply refreshes and we always had a few that came with bad sata drives ootb.

Try this, and see if your disk is ok: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.js...00dd04090aRCRD

Hi
I plugged the disk in and have to delete and create a partition on it with XP windows CD. It now shows in My Computer. I ran tests on the disk and here is the log. It failed every test. What could be the problem? If it was gone can I claim warranty(as it was quite new)? Thx.

--------------- SeaTools for Windows v1.1.0.14 ---------------
27/03/2008 18:31:46
Model: ST3160815AS
Serial Number: 6RA3SKYM
Firmware Revision: 3.AA
SMART - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:31:46
Short DST - Started 27/03/2008 18:31:49
Short DST - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:32:21
Long DST - Started 27/03/2008 18:32:48
Long DST - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:33:21
Short Generic - Started 27/03/2008 18:33:27
Short Generic - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:33:44
Long Generic - Started 27/03/2008 18:33:59
Long Generic - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:34:56
Identify - Started 27/03/2008 18:35:12
Identify - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:35:16
Identify - Started 27/03/2008 18:36:11
Identify - FAIL 27/03/2008 18:36:15
SMART: Supported and enabled
48-bit Address feature set supported: True
Max LBA: 312581808
Host Protected Area features: Supported and enabled
Mandatory Power Management: Supported and enabled
Security Mode: Supported not enabled
SET MAX security extension: 1
Advanced Power Managment: Not Supported
Download Firmware: False
SMART self-test supported: True
SMART error logging supported: True

Niiiiiice. Yeah, I'd say it'd be worth trying to make a warranty call on that one.

AngelicKnight. May I enquire is there any way to prove that the disk is faulty so that I can get the warranty?

That should be easy. You'd probably have to call them up and get the specifics but it's a no brainer. You have a seagate drive, and the official disk tester/tool/whatever-you-wanna-call-it from their website said your drive failed all tests. Armed with that info, I doubt they'd turn you down.

Hi,

I haven't run a Seagate one for a while, but somewhere in the menu (if you got the full toolset) you should find something called "RTB" or "RTM" instructions.

You basically e-mail or phone them with what this produces, and they will tell you if you should return the drive.

:)