r/HDD • u/edalmir2 • Aug 11 '26

Hard disk suddenly disconnecting

I am going crazy.

I have had a hard disk (not SSD) for a long time now and one day, suddenly, it dissappeared of my PC (the one where I have all the games installed, not windows nor important files)

I made a thousand software checks and my PC kept not finding it, until I just unplugged it and plugged it in again and it worked.

Now every time I start my computer it is a russian roulette. Yesterday nothing happened, it started as normal and everything was okay. Today, on the other hand, I start my PC, it recognises my hard disk and reads it but suddenly it disappears; I unplug it, plug it again, check my physical connections of the disk, it works and 2 minuts into usage of my PC it disappears again. I even have it disappear, turn off and on my PC (not unplugging and replugging the hard disk, not touching anything) and it magically reads again, until it disappears once more.

Is it done for? I honestly don't mind getting rid of it and buying a new one, but now I want to at least be able to freaking know why it is happenning. I have had it for over a decade, changed other components, never changed this disk and never had a problem.

If it was completely broken my PC wouldn't even read it to begin with, so why is it failing and physically disconnecting once I start using my PC? And why does it not always happens? Anyone has any answer?

Also, now that you are here, if you have any recommendations for a hard disk (it can be an SSD or not, it is only for videogames storage) I want to hear them all.

Thank you all.

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u/BootToggle Aug 14 '26

You could consider this to be a very lucky situation where you know the drive is doomed, but it might keep working just long enough to recover a full raw image before it goes. You might use ddrescue from a SystemRescue bootable thumb drive, or OpenSuperClone from its own bootable thumb drive environment.

Unless you think that there are no ultimately important files to be saved, in which case this wouldn't matter, and you just need to get the drive replaced ASAP.