HDD randomly disappeared from system (back again after restart)

Good day

I am running windows version 21H1 (OS Build 1904.1151)

My 1TB HDD all of a sudden just disappeared while working in windows.

At the time i had just finished installing World War Z - think i played for about 5 minutes when i had a CTD.

Thought nothing about it - went about trying to restart the game and after many failed attempts to restart finally went to windows explorer to discover the drive had magically disappeared.

Upon restart the drive was back again - this is the first in 3 years of having this PC that i have experienced this type of issue.

The drive itself is attached properly with no cables loose. Ill do error checking and scan for any viruses but any other idea as to what may have caused the issue?

Thank you.

Take a look at the event viewer to see if it offers any explanation into what may have happened.

Right-click Start > Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System

Scroll through the events and locate the time where the issue happened. Hopefully have a fairly good idea of what time this happened .

hsehestedt said:

Take a look at the event viewer to see if it offers any explanation into what may have happened.

Right-click Start > Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System

Scroll through the events and locate the time where the issue happened. Hopefully have a fairly good idea of what time this happened .

Hi there

Thank you for the reply.

So having had a look at event viewer there were quite a few instances of Event 51 (source: disk) and all of them were at exactly the same time.

The description given under the general tab was: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 during a paging operation"

Harddisk0 is my HDD and that was the hard drive that temporarily disappeared.

As it stands now everything is working fine, i just have no idea what caused it and being the first time its ever happened to me i was a bit perplexed.

So after a few days of everything going ok the same error (event 51) happened again.

The error occured after exiting a game.

Restarted again and hard drive was there again.

Around about the same time this error happened i noticed in event viewer there was an event ID 129.

It relates to an iaStorAC (description given was Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued)

This issue first popped up in June and was a rarity for that month and the majority of July until this last week were it has happened atleast once a day.

I have been reading up alot on this error and alot of the issues given were for hard drive issues.

This is what i've tried so far:

SFC/scannow command
chkdsk /f /r function
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth command
Hard disk sentinel
HD Tune (Full error scan)
Crystal Disk Info
SeaTools for Windows (Long generic test)

I have 2 SSD's and a single HDD.
Did alot of the thorough scanning and everything was fine. No hint of bad sectors or drive errors.

The event ID 129 i've had on and off for about a week now, its possible a windows update screwed something up along the way but i cant find anything in the update history to suggest what it was.

I played some AC Valhalla for about 90 minutes and just wanted to see if i got any issues with crashing/freezing.
Managed to get in the full play time there was a slight freeze for about a second and after the session i looked up event viewer and there was one instance of iaStorAC (Event 129) but no crashes whatsoever.

Im at a bit of a loss what i should do next. The event 129 issue seems quite sparse compared to alot of other forums ive seen and alot of the time they dont result in crashes.

On the other hand my hard drive disappearing is a bit of an issue as this is the 2nd occurence in a matter of days.

Event 51 and 129 seem to be linked but i havnt had any luck on getting a solution.

The only real system change ive had was that i installed a second SSD drive at the beginning of July but that doesnt seem to be related to any errors. I also got rid of Avast free antivirus and i am just using Windows Defender. Again im not sure if this is the issue either.

Ive played with the idea of a format and re-install of windows but ive seen quite a few cases where event 129 still persists.

Apologies for the long post, i would be grateful for any other assistance if available.

Thank you

EdTittel said:

Your next step should be to run an integrity check on the drive in question. You can try chkdsk, or use a third party tool such as Hard Disk Sentinel (Download Hard Disk Sentinel). The free trial version should tell you if you have issues or not. I own a copy myself, even though it costs $29.95 for an installable or portable version (buy the portable version if you have multiple PCs).
HTH,
--Ed--

Ive already performed a full chkdsk scan on my HDD - no errors found

Ive used Hard disk sentinel, it is limited in what i can do being as its trial but the overview said its in good health with no issues.

Just for extra i used HD Tune, Seatools for Windows and CrystalDiskInfo with no issues.

spunk said:

Try replacing the SATA Data cable to the drive and motherboard. Use a different SATA power plug from the PSU. Try a different SATA port on the motherboard.

Thank you ill take a look at that as well.

I just find it very strange because at present its an intermittent problem and its only recently occured within the last week.

I suppose i have to consider every avenue for this so its worth a go.