Ive been having problems with my hardrives. Occasionally my computer will lock up and die. I have to open the case go in and unplug/replug the sata cables to the HDs. Then the computer boots up no problem. Is this a problem with both HDs, or is this a Mobo problem? (or my sata cables). Also my 2nd HD doesn't even show up anymore. Is there any way I can retrieve data from it? Thanks Communist
You can use R-Studio to try and recover data but it's not guaranteed you'll be able to salvage anything. If the HDD controller is dead then you're screwed, unless you can find an exact same working HDD and swap the circuit boards. Also, download Hiren's disk and run diagnostics on your HDDs to see if they're failing.
If both hard drives are doing it at the same time, it very well could be a motherboard problem. A dying southbridge. If one hard drive started, then quite a while later the other one started then it could just be bad luck of dying hard drives. If your sata cables get bumped it could cause the drive to "fall out" of the system and Windows locks up for a while until the drive times out and is just dropped. Unplugged and replugging often fixes this and it shows back up in Windows. Might just need new cables, preferably ones with a locking mechanism. Windows will lock up and crash if the primary hard drive loss connection. This is what you are seeing. Whether the problem is from a dying drive, a bad connection, a power problem in the sata power cable, or a dying southbridge I really dont know. You will have to eliminate possibilities until you find the cause. Since you said both drives started doing it this leads me to believe it is either a dying SB or bad luck and dying drives. If you can stick the drives in another computer and they work fine, Id say the problem is MB related.