Disappearing hard drive

I've installed a second hard drive (internal laptop, Vista x86) and it keeps disappearing...

The drive didn't come with any install software so I used the disk management tool in Vista to format (NTFS) & partition etc. I wasn't sure how to do it that way but I thought I figured it out OK.

It appears to be fine & usable, shows up under "my computer" and I've been able to move data onto it. But for some reason, after the computer's been on for about 24 hours the drive just disappears & becomes inaccessible. If I re-boot it'll become visible again.

This last time, I was listening to music from that drive when the song suddenly started skipping. The drive had disappeared again. It's no longer visible in Disk Management either.

Any ideas?

 

Is the drive secured properly in the laptop- they can come a little loose, if they are not.
I suggest you check the connection, first.
If all is well, then I would download a hard drive utilty for that hard drive, and run its diagnostics, as it may be /becoming faulty- if its new, it can still happen.
I find this one handy on laptops.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/DiskCheckup_d3464.html
I have not tried this in Vista.
Otherwise For a Maxtor/Seagate drive, Fujitsu, western digital etc- check on majorgeeks downloads for their own tools

 

Thanks for the tips. Checked the physical drive, it's secure altho I haven't installed the drive casing yet, it's on order from HP. So maybe that creates a grounding issue? But otherwise the drive is secure & the computer doesn't move (basically a laptop used as a desktop on a cooling pad).

Ran the diagnostics program you recommended, results:

DiskCheckup Version: DiskCheckup V2.1 Build: 1001
SmartDisk DLL Version: SmartDisk DLL SDK v1.0 Build: 1013
Time of export: 17:59:22 16-Feb-2009
Device ID: 1
Device Capacity: 238472 MB
Serial Number: WD-WXEX08CC4066
Model Number: WDC WD2500BEVS-00UST0
Firmware Revision: 01.01A01
Partitions:
F: 238472 MB
IDE Registers:
Features: 0x0
Sector Count: 0x1
Sector Number: 0x1
Cylinder Low: 0x0
Cylinder High: 0x0
Drive Head: 0xB0
Command: 0xEC
ID Sector:
Cylinders: 16383
Heads: 16
Sectors per track: 63
Cur Cyls: 16383
Cur Heads: 16
Cur Sectors/Track: 63
Bytes per track: N.A.
Sectors per track: N.A.
Gen Config: 17018
Buffer Type: 0
Buffer Size: 16384
Vendor Unique: 0 0 0
More Vendor Unique: 0x8010
ECC Size: 50
Double Word IO: 0
Capabilities: 12032
PIO Timing: 0
DMA Timing: 0
BS: 7
Current Sector Capacity: 16514064
Total Addressable Sectors: 268435455
Mult. Sector Stuff: 256
Single Word DMA: 0
Multi Word DMA: 1031

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Raw Value Status Value Worst Threshold TEC
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate 0 OK 100 253 51 N.A.
3 Spin Up Time 1425ms OK 191 188 21 N.A.
4 Start/Stop Count 63 OK 100 100 0 N.A.
5 Reallocated Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 140 N.A.
7 Seek Error Rate 0 OK 200 200 51 N.A.
9 Power On Time 349 OK 100 100 0 N.A.
A Spin Retry Count 0 OK 100 253 51 N.A.
B Calibration Retry Count 0 OK 100 253 51 N.A.
C Power Cycle Count 17 OK 100 100 0 N.A.
C0 Power off Retract Count 3 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 233 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C2 Temperature 26 C OK 121 105 0 N.A.
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 OK 100 253 0 N.A.
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 OK 200 200 0 N.A.
C8 Write Error Count 0 OK 100 253 51 N.A.


I'll try that again once the drive becomes invisible, we'll see if the software even recognizes it.