So I've been working on this a couple of days now, and I need to hear from someone else. I have a HDD problem, and can't figure out a way around it.
One day, suddenly, the computer took longer to start than normal. After some looking around, I found in the "My Computer" window that one of my HDDs isn't there anymore. I thought maybe it just started up weird, and tried a restart. Still not there. Now the work begins.
I open the side panel, and can feel the HDD spinning, so it goes, but BIOS and windows both don't show it. Windows always takes longer than normal to start with that HDD plugged in, and the CPU fans even start to spool faster than normal. I unplugged the power and data cables, and we have a normal start. Windows is on an SSD, and it starts fairly fast, unless that HDD is plugged in.
I've tried moving the cables around to alternate ports, and swapping cables with others, and nothing. BIOS nor windows see it.
I bought an external SATA-USB 3.0 adapter, in hopes that I could just plug it in and at least get my data off of it, but nothing. Still doesn't show in BIOS or windows.
Now the scary part: I figure that if I can't even use a manufacturers diagnostic tool (because it won't populate on any list), I figure I have nothing to lose. I opened the cover, and took a look at the platters, the head, and anything else I could see that would be obviously broken. I know I've contaminated it by opening it now, but nothing else I can think of is working. I then powered it on. I watched it spin up fine, and could see the head move, then it (I assume) detected the cover was off, and stopped spinning. Just as it stopped, it made that "you plugged in a USB thingy" sound. I did this a few times. I navigated to the "device manager", and it sees a generic PnP 500GB USB mass storage device. It isn't spinning, and won't do anything from there. I saw that there is a yellow triangle showing that troubleshooting will be needed, and that something is wrong with it, even in windows. Of course, troubleshooting this with the windows tools available was useless.
After this, I figured that I should at least try to plug it back in, and see if it recognizes it, but nope. Same slow start as before, and simply gone from "My Computer"
Is there something I'm missing, or should I try something else? Anybody ever lose a HDD? I've never seen one go before, and it would be a first for me. It seems odd that it does everything I think it should.
Ideas?