Hard Drive partitions randomly disappear - G73JH

Hello -
I've a stock G73JH and a couple of months back I started noticing 2 of my hard drive partitions (out of 4) randomly disappear, ever so often.

I lived it for a while and then decided to check out if it was somehow software related.
So I just cleared out my hard drive and did a fresh Windows 7 install and still the same - I see my C: and another partition, but the rest just disappear - as before. Rebooting brings them back - sometimes the first time and at other times it takes a series of reboots to bring back the partitions.

I ran a diagnostic from Windows yesterday and it did not report any issues with my hard drive. I'll go home and run HDTune, but I just wanted to check if anyone else here has experienced anything similar.

Thanks!

 

Question, did your system come with two drives or one?

IF it came with two drives. are both drives showing up in windows my computer?
you could check the disk Management and see if that partition is still alive, could be not mapped with a drive letter. also check your event viewer for any error messages dealing the drives faulting.

maybe your other drive is disconnected inside your notebook, did you drop it or move it around maybe? you may want to check there, you'll thank me if it's that simple.

drives don't just disappear unless they are faulting or are rooted with a virus. that or like I said unmapped the drive lettter and it's no longer showing up in my computer.

could also look in device manager to see if the drive is showing up or also in the bios.

or try check disk,

hit start, then click run and type
Chkdsk C: /f /r
then reboot the system to get windows to check the drive. a report will be saved in the event viewer if anything was fixed.

if anything that was important was on that drive you could try a not free program called spinrite this program is not free but could fix the drive.

 

Thanks.
I do have 2 drives and I presume that I see partitions on one of them and not the other, when the partitions do disappear.
For now I see all partitions and both the drives under Device Mgr. I do not have any data to backup for now - since I just cleaned out my HDD, it’s more of a frustrating inconvenience that the partitions just disappear.
As I said, I ran all checks under Windows and did not find any issues.

And I agree that it must be a hardware issue at this point if anything.

 

well have you checked event viewer for any errors at this time? that's your clue to if a drive is failing.

You'll see many Red x's that's how you know, plus that check disk command will show unrecoverable fragments on the partition that is misbehaving.

 

Many moons ago when my big drive crash happened on my xp system. i had a blue screen of death in a computer game. so after I had rebooted I noticed in my event viewer logs, sometime like this..

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Disk
Event Category: None
Event ID: 11
Date: 30/01/2006
Time: 3:37:26 PM
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at Events and Errors Message Center

Data:
0000: 0f 00 68 00 01 00 b6 00 ..h...¶.
0008: 00 00 00 00 0b 00 04 c0 .......À
0010: 03 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0028: 90 ac 01 00 00 00 00 00 ¬......
0030: ff ff ff ff 06 00 00 00 ÿÿÿÿ....
0038: 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 @.......
0040: ff 20 06 12 08 01 30 10 ÿ ....0.
0048: 00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 ........
0050: 00 00 00 00 40 45 63 86 ....@Ec?
0058: 00 00 00 00 80 24 49 86 ....?$I?
0060: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0068: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0078: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0088: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

I would just keep seeing more and more of them tell my system no longer blue screened to death it just quit working one day. blackscreen of death, game over. I would try reinstalling windows and it would work for a day or so then same problem. replaced the drive, reinstalled windows problem solved.

Ohh btw, that was the day I learned if you get a error message saying \Device\Harddisk0 zero means your system boot drive. a 1 means your second drive and so on and so on.

 

Thanks again,
Looked up the Event Viewer - mine says
The Device\Harddisk1\DR1, is not ready for access yet.
The Driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort2.

I'm looking up on what these errors could mean.

 

what I would do is post all the errors your getting here, the devils in the details. then someone who may of had this same problem could help you. if you want to look this up on your own. the clues are in event id, and the type of error messages your seeing in event viewer. type them into Google and look them up at www.eventid.net they have a lot of errors explained but also a lot of run arounds too.

Diskdisk1 is your second drive. could try computer management and see if you see two drives.

click start
run,
type
compmgmt.msc

then click storage and tell me what you see. do you see your drives? do they have drive letters? . your looking for disk 1 if you have a hidden partition on disk 0 leave it alone it's your system backup image that asus placed there.

 

Mine started doing this about a month ago. It did it once or twice... then the third time it started having errors on the secondary hard drive. I decided the drive must be bad and replaced it. It kept losing the drive letter and freezing up so I had to send it in on RMA. I believe this to be the SATA controller dying. Specifically, I think it's having problems keeping enough power on the SATA bus to keep the drives online. I am expecting them to replace the motherboard, but we'll see what happens.

I'm pretty sure it's not something you can fix yourself unless you are willing to pay for parts out of pocket. I have three hard drives and tried them in all possible combinations. I disassembled the laptop completely, cleaned all the ribbon cables, blew the dust out of it, and put it back together. It still failed. I think it's a hardware problem. It will do it almost instantly if you read from both drives at the same time. For instance, if you boot to the primary drive and then run a virtual machine that is located on the second drive, it will freeze up or drop the drive within a minute or two. If I just left one drive in the laptop, it would run all day long and it didn't matter which bay it was in.

 

I wonder if I can still send it back. I bought it back in Feb'10. Yes the more I search for this issue - I do see that its not just me - the more I'm inclined to believe that there is nothing I can do by myself unless I go about replacing parts. Will check with Asus tomorrow.

 

Yes, all is well for now, I have all partitions and I do see 2 drives - drive 0 the primary and 1 the secondary.
I know that the partitions will disappear eventually, but not quite sure when.
When it does I'll check and report back.

Thank you.

 

I bought mine in January of 2010. It died three days later but I sent it back to NewEgg who replaced it with a new unit so you and I probably have units of almost identical age. They have a two year warranty. I would send it back very soon. The problem gets worse over a period of 45 days in my experience. I would get it to them and get a new motherboard or whatever the problem is soon before you run out of warranty. Of course, it's your computer and do what you like but your unit is doing exactly what mine did and they are the same age. I sent mine in hoping I would have it back before the holiday rush.

It does not seem like a problem that would go away over time. I broke the whole machine down and cleaned it, bought a new hard drive, and even restored the OS to the factory settings using the Asus Recovery media. I'm pretty sure its got to be hardware.

 

I would do what Jody says, contact asus on this matter asap.

 

Just go off the phone with Asus Techs. I'm sending it to them on RMA.
Keeping my fingers crossed for now.

Thank you for the suggestion.

 

I hope you get it back soon. I sure hate being without mine. I'm hoping it's one of those "one week turnaround" deals. I had to send it in for warranty work almost a year ago and they kept it for something like six weeks. Other people get their back in a week, though. Hopefully we will be those people this time.

 

Thanks Jody!
To be honest I'm on vacation and have a spare Gateway laptop, so can wait for a bit, but with Batman AC and Skyrim just round the corner..ohh its going to nothing short of torment to be without my Asus.

I hope we get it back soon though!

 

The same thing happens with my secondary drive which is a OCZ Vertex 2 SSD. Yes, I know they are def. not the best, but the drive is updated with the latest firmware, and a check reveals no problems with it. It must be a Sata/Mobo thing as mentioned..

My G73JH is 1½ years old, time to retire already?