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A problem happened two times last year where the hd suddenly stopped while using the computer and the system froze, I restarted the pc and it was fine for another hour when it froze again, but I ended up resolving it by blowing and repositioning my sata and power cables the problem would go away for good. This happened two times between 4 months.

Yesterday I left my computer for around a minute and when I returned I tried to use the mouse but the system crashed with a Blue Screen Of Death (OS couldn't read hd). When I tried to restart, the BIOS wouldn't recognize the hard drive. That was the first time the BIOS couldn't recognize the hd and I though that the hd died. I was lucky however and by blowing and repositioning my sata and power cables I managed to get it working again. Unfortunately it happened today again a few minutes ago, still couldn't boot and had to do my workaround.

I have backed up my critical data but I really hope it doesn't die because of the extremely high current hard drive prices (warranty expired a month ago). It's strange because there are no signs of it being in a bad condition, no weird sound, everything works fine and fast, only these kind of failures.

What do you guys think whats causing this and is there any way to fix this?

Edit: The hard drive has passed all of the Seagate Diagnostic checks so the drive it's self might not be the problem. Having replaced the power cable, I'll wait and see how it goes.

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  • Make sure that power cable and SATA cable are plugged in firmly (SATA cable needs to be checked on the motherboard and the hard drive). Have you tried replacing the sate cable and using a different plug on the power cable? If that doesn't work, (I know this would be a little bit of a stretch), but maybe that portion of the PSU is going bad and not giving power to the HDD... If you have another computer with roughly the same specs or more, I would try swapping out the PSU and see if it happens again. Also, as a side note you should clean your computer our with canned air once every 1-2 months.
    – David
    Apr 11, 2012 at 19:35
  • My other PC is a laptop so can't really test with a different PSU. As for changing the SATA cable I haven't got one at the moment but will try to get one as soon as possible and see what happens
    – Panayiotis
    Apr 11, 2012 at 19:46
  • Download the diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturers website and run a diagnostic on the drive.
    – Moab
    Apr 12, 2012 at 6:09
  • @Moab I already did and I passed all the tests (SMART,self-test,short generic,long generic)
    – Panayiotis
    Apr 12, 2012 at 9:35
  • @Panayiotis Then that rules out the hard drive, Edit your question to include this new information please. If it is a desktop, replace the hard drive data cable.
    – Moab
    Apr 12, 2012 at 15:26

1 Answer 1

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Unless your PC is in a location where it is jostled a lot or is constantly vibrating, the power and SATA cable manipulations seem unrelated to the actual solution to the problem you're experiencing. My guess is that the cable fiddling is giving your PC or your hard drive time to cool down to a reasonable operating temperature, at which point they start working again.

  1. Make sure your PC fan is working.
  2. Blow the dust out of PC.
  3. Make sure there's plenty of space in front of the fan for hot air to exit the PC.
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  • I do regularly clean it, CPU is at 36C average 29C cold boot so that indicates an averagely clean system. Downloaded HDDTemp and current temp is 36C which again is reasonable, since the computer has been open from the morning and the only pause was the 3 minute break to unplug the cables
    – Panayiotis
    Apr 11, 2012 at 19:45

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