Samsung 2TB drive not detected

[Mark Perkins]

I have three Samsung 2TB F4EG (HD204UI) hard drives in my PC, which is a
home built system that I assembled in 2011 and has been working fine ever
since. A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared" from Windows 7's
Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not detecting the
drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

I switched power and data (SATA) cables with another drive that is working,
which didn't help. Next, I swapped the PCB of the problem drive with another
drive of the same model and same firmware revision. The problem drive still
wasn't detected, while the good drive still was detected. I then swapped the
PCB's back to make sure the good drive was still detected, and it was.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data cable, and it's
not the drive's PCB, what else can I try? Do the various hard drive data
recovery applications bypass the BIOS routines and attempt to detect the
drive in their own way, or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

 

[miso]

I have three Samsung 2TB F4EG (HD204UI) hard drives in my PC, which is a
home built system that I assembled in 2011 and has been working fine ever
since. A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared" from Windows 7's
Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not detecting the
drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

I switched power and data (SATA) cables with another drive that is working,
which didn't help. Next, I swapped the PCB of the problem drive with another
drive of the same model and same firmware revision. The problem drive still
wasn't detected, while the good drive still was detected. I then swapped the
PCB's back to make sure the good drive was still detected, and it was.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data cable, and it's
not the drive's PCB, what else can I try? Do the various hard drive data
recovery applications bypass the BIOS routines and attempt to detect the
drive in their own way, or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

I have no first hand knowledge regarding accessing a hard drive
independent of the bios. But I pulled this out of the Spinrite wiki:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As of 1st July 2013, Steve Gibson has stated that he is actively working
on a minor update to SpinRite that will bring with it many features to
update its compatibility with modern hardware; among these being use of
direct PCI bus access rather than the BIOS for accessing the disk,
ability to boot on Mac systems (requiring an update to the keyboard
input driver), fixes to the FreeDOS kernel to address issues users have
had, and the use of various memory management tricks on x86 processors
to allow access to large disk transfer buffers while in real mode,
improving performance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If the wiki is right (big if), some programs can access the hard drive
independent of the bios.

Personally I think you have done a job well beyond the call of duty,
i.e. swapping PCBs. [I would be way too afraid of ruining the good
drive, though perhaps you did a back up first.]

Now when you swapped cables, was that swapping SATA ports? Or what it
keeping the same SATA ports and just swapping the cables.

Surely you have a usb to sata laying around. Doesn't that bypass the
disk drive bios?

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared" from Windows 7's
Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not detecting the
drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

This is a common failure mode for these drives, I'm afraid. I've had a
few do that.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data cable, and it's
not the drive's PCB, what else can I try?

Restore from your last backup. You do have backups, right?

Do the various hard drive data
recovery applications bypass the BIOS routines and attempt to detect the
drive in their own way

Most do. They talk to the hardware, bypassing BIOS. Seagate took over
Samsung's hard drive business, so try:

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

I'd suggest the DOS version:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/201271en

Create the boot floppy or CD and boot the machine from that. Disconnect
all hard drives except the dead one first.

A Linux live CD would be worth a try, though if BIOS can't see the drive
it's unlikely Linux will too.

, or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

no.

 

[VanguardLH]

I have three Samsung 2TB F4EG (HD204UI) hard drives in my PC, which is a
home built system that I assembled in 2011 and has been working fine ever
since. A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared" from Windows 7's
Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not detecting the
drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

I switched power and data (SATA) cables with another drive that is working,
which didn't help. Next, I swapped the PCB of the problem drive with another
drive of the same model and same firmware revision. The problem drive still
wasn't detected, while the good drive still was detected. I then swapped the
PCB's back to make sure the good drive was still detected, and it was.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data cable, and it's
not the drive's PCB, what else can I try? Do the various hard drive data
recovery applications bypass the BIOS routines and attempt to detect the
drive in their own way, or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

Unplug all hard drives except the problematic one. Unplug any optical
drives even if they have no discs sitting in them. Take off the side
panel. With the computer powered off, power it on. See if you can hear
the whine from the problematic hard drive as it powers on and spins up.
Some hard drives are quiet so you need to have your ear next to the hard
drive when you power it up, especially to hear over the roar of the
case, CPU, and PSU fans. If you don't hear it spin up or just hear it
clicking then the drive is unusable. Either its power or logic
circuitry has fried or a component failed or the spindle has siezed.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have three Samsung 2TB F4EG (HD204UI) hard drives in my PC, which
is a home built system that I assembled in 2011 and has been working
fine ever since. A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared"
from Windows 7's Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not
detecting the drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

Win does its own scan for drives. Likely the same thing that prevents
the bios from seeing the drive is preventing Win from seeing it too.

I switched power and data (SATA) cables with another drive that is
working,
which didn't help. Next, I swapped the PCB of the problem drive with
another
drive of the same model and same firmware revision. The problem drive
still
wasn't detected, while the good drive still was detected. I then swapped
the
PCB's back to make sure the good drive was still detected, and it was.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data
cable, and it's not the drive's PCB, what else can I try?

The SATA port the drive is plugged into, presumably on the motherboard.

Do the various hard drive data recovery applications bypass the
BIOS routines and attempt to detect the drive in their own way,

Most of the modern ones do.

or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

No, not even Win does it that way.

And certainly the diagnostics don't do it that way.

 

[Mark Perkins]

Unplug all hard drives except the problematic one. Unplug any optical
drives even if they have no discs sitting in them. Take off the side
panel. With the computer powered off, power it on. See if you can hear
the whine from the problematic hard drive as it powers on and spins up.
Some hard drives are quiet so you need to have your ear next to the hard
drive when you power it up, especially to hear over the roar of the
case, CPU, and PSU fans. If you don't hear it spin up or just hear it
clicking then the drive is unusable. Either its power or logic
circuitry has fried or a component failed or the spindle has siezed.

Thanks for the suggestion.

At this point, the drive is physically outside of the computer case. It's
still removed from when I was swapping PCB's around. Anyway, I can easily
feel that it's spinning up. There are no audible clicking sounds or other
unnatural sounds. Physically, it sounds fine.

 

[Mark Perkins]

Win does its own scan for drives. Likely the same thing that prevents
the bios from seeing the drive is preventing Win from seeing it too.

That might be a bummer.

The SATA port the drive is plugged into, presumably on the motherboard.

When I swapped SATA cables, I only swapped at the drive end, so I was using
a different SATA port on the motherboard, a port that continues to work with
another drive. I also tried a SATA cable connected to an add-in SATA PCI
card, but the drive was also not detected that way.

Most of the modern ones do.


No, not even Win does it that way.

And certainly the diagnostics don't do it that way.

The drive might be hosed then, but I intend to try one or more disk
utilities to make sure. Thanks.

 

[Char Jackson]

This is a common failure mode for these drives, I'm afraid. I've had a
few do that.

I have another bunch of these Samsung drives in another PC, so I may have
more failures of this type ahead of me then.

Restore from your last backup. You do have backups, right?

Not really a problem. The stuff I care about is backed up. At this point I
care more about losing the drive than losing the data it contained.

Most do. They talk to the hardware, bypassing BIOS. Seagate took over
Samsung's hard drive business, so try:

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

I'd suggest the DOS version:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/201271en

Create the boot floppy or CD and boot the machine from that. Disconnect
all hard drives except the dead one first.

A Linux live CD would be worth a try, though if BIOS can't see the drive
it's unlikely Linux will too.

Thanks, I'll give those suggestions a try.

 

[Mark Perkins]

I have three Samsung 2TB F4EG (HD204UI) hard drives in my PC, which is a
home built system that I assembled in 2011 and has been working fine ever
since. A few days ago, one of the hard drives "disappeared" from Windows 7's
Windows Explorer and Disk Management.

I rebooted the system and found that the BIOS is also not detecting the
drive, which explains why Windows doesn't see it.

I switched power and data (SATA) cables with another drive that is working,
which didn't help. Next, I swapped the PCB of the problem drive with another
drive of the same model and same firmware revision. The problem drive still
wasn't detected, while the good drive still was detected. I then swapped the
PCB's back to make sure the good drive was still detected, and it was.

So if it's not the drive's power cable, not the SATA data cable, and it's
not the drive's PCB, what else can I try? Do the various hard drive data
recovery applications bypass the BIOS routines and attempt to detect the
drive in their own way, or does everything rely on the BIOS to see it first?

I have no first hand knowledge regarding accessing a hard drive
independent of the bios. But I pulled this out of the Spinrite wiki:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As of 1st July 2013, Steve Gibson has stated that he is actively working
on a minor update to SpinRite that will bring with it many features to
update its compatibility with modern hardware; among these being use of
direct PCI bus access rather than the BIOS for accessing the disk,
ability to boot on Mac systems (requiring an update to the keyboard
input driver), fixes to the FreeDOS kernel to address issues users have
had, and the use of various memory management tricks on x86 processors
to allow access to large disk transfer buffers while in real mode,
improving performance.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If the wiki is right (big if), some programs can access the hard drive
independent of the bios.

Personally I think you have done a job well beyond the call of duty,
i.e. swapping PCBs. [I would be way too afraid of ruining the good
drive, though perhaps you did a back up first.]

Now when you swapped cables, was that swapping SATA ports? Or what it
keeping the same SATA ports and just swapping the cables.

I swapped at the drive end of the cable, leaving the mobo end attached to
the port that works with another drive.

Surely you have a usb to sata laying around. Doesn't that bypass the
disk drive bios?

I moved recently, so a lot of my goodies are in a box, waiting to be
discovered and unpacked.

 

[Mark Perkins]

This is a common failure mode for these drives, I'm afraid. I've had a
few do that.


Restore from your last backup. You do have backups, right?


Most do. They talk to the hardware, bypassing BIOS. Seagate took over
Samsung's hard drive business, so try:

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

I'd suggest the DOS version:

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/201271en

Create the boot floppy or CD and boot the machine from that. Disconnect
all hard drives except the dead one first.

A Linux live CD would be worth a try, though if BIOS can't see the drive
it's unlikely Linux will too.


no.

At the following link, it says this:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/170511en?popup=true


"If the BIOS does not recognize the drive, or the drive does not spin up,
Seatools will not detect the drive either."

I'm finding that to be true. Neither the DOS version nor the Windows version
of SeaTools is detecting this drive. I may have to give it its last rites.

 

[Rod Speed]

That might be a bummer.

Yeah, looks like it.

When I swapped SATA cables, I only swapped at the drive end,
so I was using a different SATA port on the motherboard, a port
that continues to work with another drive.

OK, thought you might have done that since you did check the
other possibilitys carefully, just wanted to check that you had.

I also tried a SATA cable connected to an add-in SATA
PCI card, but the drive was also not detected that way.

Given that you have said elsewhere that the drive does spin
up, most likely the connection to the head in the sealed
enclosure has failed so it can't see the heads anymore.

The drive might be hosed then,

Yeah, looks like it.

but I intend to try one or more disk utilities to make sure.

Yeah, see if Everest can see the drive.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/everest_free_edition.html

Thanks.

No problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

At the following link, it says this:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/170511en?popup=true


"If the BIOS does not recognize the drive, or the drive does not spin up,
Seatools will not detect the drive either."

I'm finding that to be true. Neither the DOS version nor the Windows
version
of SeaTools is detecting this drive. I may have to give it its last rites.

It might still be in warranty, they do have a decent warranty time.

 

[VanguardLH]

Something to consider: other drives put the components on the bottom of
the PCB (the "hidden look") which would have them shed their heat into
the drive body's metal mass. The Samsung has its components soldered on
top (the "show us look") which means the only cooling is air cooling.
So it's possible the PCB didn't get the air cooling it needed.

Rather than use a ribbon cable to the PCB, the Samsung has a pressure
pad on the drive body that contact pads on the PCB must press against.
This is just a simple pressure contact between PCB pad and fingers in
the body pressure pad. If there was oxidation or filth lodged there
then the contacts may be open. You would have to remove the torx screws
from the PCB to lift it up, use a white eraser to clean the PCB and
pressure pad contacts, and replace the PCB and hope the PCB presses its
contacts hard enough against the fingers of the drive body's pressure
pad. If the torx screw were loose next to the PCB pads then they
wouldn't be pressing down hard enough. If the PCB were warped away from
the drive body then the contacts pads won't touch the pressure pad's
fingers.

http://www.storagereview.com/images/samsung-f4eg-apart.jpg
http://www.storagereview.com/images/samsung-f4eg-pcb-bottom.jpg

The F4EG reduced the platter count to 3 versus the earlier F3EG that had
4 platters. Yeah, great model numbering: F3EG has 4, F4EG has 3. They
upped the density of the platters to reduce the platter count. This
gave the motor a reprieve with less mass to start spinning meaning less
torque required by the motor thusly less surge current. As to whether
they continued using the same old motor but under a lighter load or went
with a lower-powered, less torque motor is something I don't know. If
they went to a lesser powered motor, the surge current would still be
high.

So do you power off your computer and power it up only when you are at
the computer? That is, do you power cycle a lot? Also, look at your
power saving scheme to see if you are always spinning down the drive
when it goes idle for awhile. That means when you access the drive that
it has to spin up and there's the surge again. The power-up surge is
stressful on electrical components. I forget which SMART attribute (I'd
have to look it up so you could do that - LoadCycles maybe?) tracks the
number of power cycles for the drive. See if it is hundreds or
thousands of times more than the number of times you yourself power up
your computer. Since this is an "eco" drive, it may very well, like
with WDC green drives, keep powering off and on all the time for what
you feel are overly short idle periods. Yes, these "green" drives use
less energy during their operation but they fail early and fill up the
dumps with is also an energy cost, so they really are not eco-friendly.
Green on electrical consumption is far less important than green on
filling city dumps. Because WDC green drives fail early, some users
figured out how to keep the drive from spinning down and up all the
time:

http://www.instantfundas.com/2011/12/intellipark-makes-western-digital-green.html

I don't recommend ever getting a green or eco-friendly hard drive. They
don't last as long, you lose on ROI, and they aren't dump eco-friendly.
I'd rather have a few minutes less battery time in a laptop than lose
years of use on a hard drive.

 

[Mark Perkins]

It might still be in warranty, they do have a decent warranty time.

I may have closed that door by removing the PCB. ;-)

Can't hurt to check, though.

 

[Mark Perkins]

Given that you have said elsewhere that the drive does spin
up, most likely the connection to the head in the sealed
enclosure has failed so it can't see the heads anymore.

That doesn't sound like something I can repair.

Yeah, see if Everest can see the drive.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/everest_free_edition.html

I'll take a look, thanks.

 

[Mark Perkins]

So do you power off your computer and power it up only when you are at
the computer? That is, do you power cycle a lot?

This PC stays on 24/7, only powering down or rebooting when absolutely
necessary. In addition to disabling drive spin down in Windows' power
profile, I remember executing a command to disable spin down in general back
when I was upgrading the drive firmware. These drives are already very low
power at idle, so spin down isn't that important, and besides, this PC is a
network file server and I don't like the access delay while waiting for a
drive to spin up, so I disabled the feature.

I guess what I don't know is whether very long periods of uptime are harder
on a drive than allowing it to spin down in between accesses. I would have
thought that allowing it to run, albeit at idle, would be easier on it.

Yes, these "green" drives use
less energy during their operation but they fail early <snip> ....
Because WDC green drives fail early <snip> ....
I don't recommend ever getting a green or eco-friendly hard drive. They
don't last as long, you lose on ROI, and they aren't dump eco-friendly.
I'd rather have a few minutes less battery time in a laptop than lose
years of use on a hard drive.

I probably haven't been paying attention because I wasn't aware that green
drives have a tendency to fail early.

 

[miso]

Sounds good. I just wanted to see if the bad drive went to a known good
port.

 

[miso]

Parted Magic was the free linux bootable program. Now it is $5. Still a
good deal.

https://partedmagic.com/

I'd suggest Opensuse and Ubuntu for live CDs. These are the easier to
use distributions IMHO. Opensuse is really good at finding drives.
Ubuntu probably has the most online users.

 

[Rod Speed]

Something to consider: other drives put the components on the bottom
of the PCB (the "hidden look") which would have them shed their heat
into the drive body's metal mass. The Samsung has its components
soldered on top (the "show us look") which means the only cooling is
air cooling. So it's possible the PCB didn't get the air cooling it
needed.

Those Samsung green drives don't get very warm with no cooling airflow at
all.

And the fact that logic card swap didn't make any difference
shows that nothing on the logic card has failed anyway.

Rather than use a ribbon cable to the PCB, the Samsung has a pressure
pad on the drive body that contact pads on the PCB must press against.
This is just a simple pressure contact between PCB pad and fingers in
the body pressure pad. If there was oxidation or filth lodged there
then the contacts may be open. You would have to remove the torx
screws from the PCB to lift it up, use a white eraser to clean the PCB
and pressure pad contacts, and replace the PCB and hope the PCB
presses its contacts hard enough against the fingers of the drive body's
pressure pad. If the torx screw were loose next to the PCB pads then they
wouldn't be pressing down hard enough. If the PCB were warped away
from the drive body then the contacts pads won't touch the pressure pad's
fingers.

The F4EG reduced the platter count to 3 versus the earlier F3EG that had
4 platters. Yeah, great model numbering: F3EG has 4, F4EG has 3. They
upped the density of the platters to reduce the platter count. This
gave the motor a reprieve with less mass to start spinning meaning less
torque required by the motor thusly less surge current. As to whether
they continued using the same old motor but under a lighter load or went
with a lower-powered, less torque motor is something I don't know. If
they went to a lesser powered motor, the surge current would still be
high.

So do you power off your computer and power it up only when you
are at the computer? That is, do you power cycle a lot? Also, look
at your power saving scheme to see if you are always spinning down
the drive when it goes idle for awhile. That means when you access
the drive that it has to spin up and there's the surge again. The
power-up surge is stressful on electrical components.

Again, the fact that the logic card swap makes no difference
shows that there is no problem with the logic card.

I forget which SMART attribute (I'd have to look it up so you could do
that - LoadCycles maybe?) tracks the number of power cycles for the
drive. See if it is hundreds or thousands of times more than the number
of times you yourself power up your computer. Since this is an "eco"
drive, it may very well, like with WDC green drives, keep powering off
and on all the time for what you feel are overly short idle periods.

No they don't. And again, the fact that the logic card swap
makes no difference shows that that isnt the problem.

Yes, these "green" drives use less energy
during their operation but they fail early

Like hell they do.

and fill up the dumps with is also an energy
cost, so they really are not eco-friendly.

Utterly mangled all over again.

Green on electrical consumption is far less
important than green on filling city dumps.

You haven't established that the SAMSUNG green drives
do fail at a higher rate than their non green drives do.

Because WDC green drives fail early,

And Samsung green drives don't.

some users figured out how to keep the drive
from spinning down and up all the time:

Samsung drives don't do that.

http://www.instantfundas.com/2011/12/intellipark-makes-western-digital-green.html

I don't recommend ever getting a green or eco-friendly hard drive.

More fool you.

They don't last as long,

Bullshit with Samsung drives.

you lose on ROI,

Like hell you do with Samsung drives which have long warrantys.

and they aren't dump eco-friendly.

Even sillier.

I'd rather have a few minutes less battery time
in a laptop than lose years of use on a hard drive.

His isnt even a laptop.

 

[Rod Speed]

I may have closed that door by removing the PCB. ;-)

They aren't likely to notice.

Can't hurt to check, though.

Yeah, they have a long warranty.