having issues with a WD 1TB Black Caviar

[SeanChiarot]

well i picked up a WD 1TB Black Caviar Internal harddrive, how ever when i tossed it in, my computer was stuck on the BIOS page (showing the mobo name...) so i took it out, and it booted into windows no problem, so again, i plugged it in booted up, same thing, stuck on the bios page.... so i went out for a bite to eat, when i came home, it had booted into windows (happy? wrong...) went to my computer to format the bugger, and it wasnt there, it wasnt in device manager, and it wasnt in that disk management thing... so i figured, hey i have a spare enclosure, lets try that, tried it, windows seen it, i was able to format it, so i figured it should be good now?, so i tossed it into the pc AGAIN, windows booted (happy?!) went to my computer it showed the new harddrive (HAPPY?!....wrong!) as soon as i tried to write to the drive it basicaly crashed.... (just dropped it self from device manager, disk management, and my computer)

any ideas whats goin on? (my system specs are in my signature...)

someone suggested jumpers, how ever the harddrive didnt come with any.... so i have to wait for the next time i head into town, but im hoping someone has any OTHER ideas?

 

[DavidJa]

have you already tried the western digital diagnostics software? a different cable? a different sata port? or possibly a rma is needed...

 

[SeanChiarot]

rma?

as for there diag software no, ill give that a shot right away, diff cable yes, diff port yes

*edit*
alright gave that diag software a shot, and the HD doesnt show up......, this is getting annoying -_-

 

[MVC]

rma?

as for there diag software no, ill give that a shot right away, diff cable yes, diff port yes

*edit*
alright gave that diag software a shot, and the HD doesnt show up......, this is getting annoying -_-

rma is Return to Manufacturer Authorization (it's also used as short-hand for returning to a vendor, and other types of returns).

Assuming this drive is being attached to the motherboard in your sig (Asus M3N72-D), only S-ATA ports 1-4 are configured by default as IDE (which is what you want). If you are using one of those ports, when the machine boots, hit delete (or whatever other instructions the boot screen gives you) and enter BIOS. See if the BIOS is recognizing the drive, and if it isn't see how the port you've got the drive connected to is configured. Also, and this is a true shot in the dark, while the machine is booting (along with everything else I just suggested ) let a hand rest on the drive and see if you can feel it spinning up--one of the easiest ways to verify that the drive is actually getting power. If the drive doesn't have power it won't be recognized by anything.

Let us know how you fare.

Marco

 

[SeanChiarot]

i think i have figured out the issue, i noticed the my primary harddrive had a jumper on it, so i tossed that on the new harddrive, and it started up like a charm, (although i didnt have a OS on it, i was able to boot to a live version of linux), and i was able to write files to the disk..... no problem!

so now i just have to wait untill i head to a tech store that has a spare jumper

ok now this is REALLY messed up!, it was working great yesterday, was able to read/write to it, but today its showing up in Disk management but its showing it as "Unallocated"

 

[KTE]

Is the drive formatted?
Does it have an OS installed?
When you can see the drive in the OS, does accessing the drive become slug slow or freeze your system?
Does the BIOS POST display any error messages?
Does attaching the drive make your OS boot up dirt slow?
Try different ports/cables as well as disconnecting other peripherals one at a time.

Check with the WD Diagnostic software when it does work and check the SMART status. It could be a faulty or corrupt firmware. The only other place I've seen this is with a dying HDD and a dead HDD.

Also make sure you have OS power savings for the HDD off, which can put the drive to sleep (and disappear from any drive detecting programs). I've found that many times the HDD sleep function will not awaken the drive again if you manually try to do so.

Unallocated means you need to format it. After that, it#ll show up as a drive. You can partition it and only after that will you be able to access and store data on the drive.

 

[SeanChiarot]

Is the drive formatted?

Yes, i was able to format it once i tossed it into a external enclosure...

Does it have an OS installed?

No, i was planning on using this harddrive for my multimedia files....

When you can see the drive in the OS, does accessing the drive become slug slow or freeze your system?

When i was able to see it, i tried coping over a few files, some copied then it crashed..., so i re-booted and then it wasnt there anymore...

Does the BIOS POST display any error messages?

I did get one about a boot failure, so i went into bios, changed boot order and it started up fine (the WD did not appear in BIOS when i did this...)

Does attaching the drive make your OS boot up dirt slow?

OH YES!!!, =_= its CRAZY slow...

Try different ports/cables as well as disconnecting other peripherals one at a time.

Done and Done, i even took off the cable from my primary and changed it with the one i was using on this harddrive, PC booted up but again no WD....

Check with the WD Diagnostic software when it does work and check the SMART status. It could be a faulty or corrupt firmware. The only other place I've seen this is with a dying HDD and a dead HDD.

i WAS actualy able to run this software when this harddrive was in my enclosure, it said it passed....

Also make sure you have OS power savings for the HDD off, which can put the drive to sleep (and disappear from any drive detecting programs). I've found that many times the HDD sleep function will not awaken the drive again if you manually try to do so.

Havent tried this one, thanks for the idea, ill let you know if it works!

Unallocated means you need to format it. After that, it#ll show up as a drive. You can partition it and only after that will you be able to access and store data on the drive.

again, i did this, i was able to boot, and the next day when i re-booted it said unallocated... =_=


like i said above though, it only worked with a jumper on pins 5&6, but even then it was "buggy" (only worked 1/2 the time...)

im going to try your one idea about the power though, and hope that works, if not im heading back into winnipeg tomorow and will return this for a seagate (hasnt failed me before...)

 

[KTE]

If attaching the drive makes the bootup and system usage painfully slow then its most probably either a corrupt drive (almost dead or dead) or a firmware corruption. That leads to it being detected at times and not so at other times. The behavior just turns random. I've just RMA'd a Caviar Blue in the first week which had the same problem (and took me 2 weeks to figure out). Hope you work something out.

If you can ever get it up and detected in the OS again, try to run a HD Tach 32MB benchmark on it. If its what I'm thinking, a range of sectors will be corrupt and inaccessible and the rest of the drive will be fine. HD Tach will show a huge dip to near 10MB/s where the corrupted sectors are and run perfectly for the rest of the media interface. That'll be 100% evidence of a dead drive.