G73jh hard drive keeps disappearing

My second hard drive keeps dropping off. I thought it was the drive and purchased another one and installed it. It took only a day and it dropped off as well. When I reboot it does come back... so far.

I read somewhere about a loose cable but can't find the article again. I suspect it is not the drive but something else... The drive with the operating system on it has not failed.

Any suggestions, I am off warranty by a couple of months.

 

Have you tried to reseat the ribbon connecting the 2 HDDs to the mobo? How many times have you dismantled the machine already, it might be the case that it's already loose perhaps.

You might want also to check the 2nd HDD if the machine is able to read it, on the Seagate Tools to perform tests on it.

 

The loose cable sounds like a likely reason... the machine was RMAd once back in January of this year. They put a new MB in I think. How hard is it to get to the ribbon cable that connects the drives? Thanks for responding.

 

BTOtech.com | G73Jh & G73Jw & G73Sw Disassembly Take Apart G73 g73jw service manual - YouTube it does not look easy IMO

 

You have to get to the part where you remove the palmrest assembly, then you can access the SATA connector.

 

Is the hard drive cable(s) the one he removes near the end of the video on the palmrest side of the mb? The one with the blue end... at about 7:10.

 

Yep, that's it, the other end of the cable might be loose. There is a small daughter board that has the two SATA connectors for the drives on it, check the cable on that end too. It is held in place by two screws if i recall correctly.

 

I have not taken my machine apart yet... today it started running very slowly. Windows aero keeps shutting off, every time it does the screen blinks. My wireless card disappears, not a dropped connection, it gets a red x on it. I'm beginning to think more is going on then just the hard drive connector issue. I tried removing the hard drive that drops to see if that helps, it didn't.

I am doing a disk image restore now to see if that helps. Next step will be to tear it apart I guess, unless someone has a better approach. I'll bet there is no loose cable though.

The disk image is working so far, maybe it was a software issue.

 

I don't know if the problem I had. I only have a single hard drive. In my case my hard-drive would seem to disappear intermittently. (My linux OS complained about i/o errors.) After taking the case apart, I discovered that the fragile ribbon cable connecting the hard drive HDD module to the motherboard was pinched at the same place where it was folded over. It was visibly damaged.



I contacted ASUS tech support online and sent them this picture. It took about 2-3 weeks for a reply. They said I "might have a hardware problem", and to send the laptop to them. Not impressed.

Instead I fixed the problem myself by opening up the folded cable slghtly, enough to insert some paddiing inside where the 180-degree fold occurred (I just used duct tape for padding). I might have removed the black tape behind the cable to reduce pressure on it. I also (very important) loosened the screw (located underneath where one of the hard drives is mounted) which connects the metal frame to the plastic case which was pinching the cable. Surprisingly this has fixed the problem. It has been a year since then. I can't gaurantee this would solve the problem for you.

It looks like there is no way to purchase the cable. You probably should send the laptop back to ASUS. (or send it to the BTOtech.com company below. They seem competent.)

I found a nice video on youtube that shows how to take apart an asus G73 here:
BTOtech.com | G73Jh & G73Jw & G73Sw Disassembly Take Apart G73 g73jw service manual - YouTube
Be very careful to open the latches on all the ribbon cables. You will need tweezers and some sharp small screwdrivers:

 

Thanks for the reply. I still have not done anything to fix mine. It has been OK for quite a while, it did drop off the other day a couple of times in the space of an hour. I eventually turned my machine sideways (when it was shut off) rattled the bottom if it few times with my hand and then restarted it. It has been fine ever since. I am not sure if it actually did anything, but until it actually gets to the point of dropping constantly I am going to avoid taking the machine apart. I do not have a lot of faith in my abilities to take it apart that far and get it back together again.

On a more positive note, those U32 Ultra books with a 1920 x 1080 screen look nice.