Strange issue with old Toshiba Laptop

Hello.
i have one Toshiba Laptop that every now and them has the hard drive LED stuck (as if using disk at 100%) and then hard disk dissappears for good (not detected) until PC is powered off and it's left that way for a while. I checked SMART values and health was ok. I did a surface test too and it came up clean.

Any ideas? This is driving me crazy.
Could it be temperature?
Could it be the drive is dislodged in its socket/connector?

I am currently doing a full backup with MR Free before it starts failing again.

What do you suggest as course of action? I could try with different disks.

eLPuSHeR said:

Could it be temperature? Could it be the drive is dislodged in its socket/connector?.

Could be either, to which you could add the possibility that the drive is 'sticky' and stops spinning.

What do you suggest as course of action? I could try with different disks.

First I'd have another look at the drive's SMART data for clues, I use CrystalDisk Info Portable for that.

For the last few years we’ve used the following five SMART stats as a means of helping determine if a drive is going to fail.

Attribute		Description
SMART 5		Reallocated Sectors Count
SMART 187		Reported Uncorrectable Errors
SMART 188		Command Timeout
SMART 197		Current Pending Sector Count
SMART 198		Uncorrectable Sector Count

When the RAW value for one of these five attributes is greater than zero, we have a reason to investigate...

Backblaze | What SMART Hard Disk Errors Actually Tell Us

You could also look in the Event Log for drive errors.

Then I'd try another disk with the MR image restored to it. Old Toshibas are easy to swap out disks (I know, I have a couple). If that shows the same symptoms, chances are it's a motherboard or cable fault.

This is a Crystal Disk Info capture I have made when I was trying to do a MR image for the second time. It keeps failing on me with some weird read error issue. I am using a different program (AOMEI Backupper) and it seems to work just right.

I will check the socket tomorrow and I will probably try a different hard disk too.

11 year old drive, seriously, why are you bothering, replace it.

There is more to an HDD than just scanning the surface or looking at SMART data, temperature etc.

A number of my recent ones have given no clue from such data, random failures.
It was the electronics that died in the drive. Nothing wrong with surface scans or SMART data

You can usually easily visually check SATA connectors and substitute cables and so on, if you are lucky that might work.
If then it does not work the SATA interface electronics on the MOBO would be suspect.
Again, equally as old and suspect.

I replaced the hard drive. Hopefully there won't be any more issues.