Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

makhlaghi · 2014-10-17 11:22:54

This morning I got a lot of pacman updates mostly for gnome 3.14. everything went fine and after the upgrades I did my usually day to day work. I also powered off the system few times during the day and everything was fine.

But in the afternoon, when I wanted to log back into my system (after it had been locked), it wouldn't work! So after a few attempts that log in didn't respond, I restarted the system. after the restart I noticed GRUB isn't working (complaining about not finding hd0) and after a few tests, it didn't go into GRUB either! After "verifying DMI pool data...", a curser just blinks and nothing happens!

So using the installation USB I booted into a shell and after running lsblk, to my supprize I saw that my boot hard disk is not being detected at all! I also checked the BIOS menu and it isn't detected there either! I even opened my case and checked all the connections, they are all firm.

Does this mean my hard disk has stopped working!?!? or might there be a software problem? it is only about 4.5 years I am using it! I would really appreciate any guidance on this issue.

Thanks in advance

graysky · 2014-10-17 11:26:26

Hardware failure? If the BIOS isn't seeing it, that is a bad sign.

makhlaghi · 2014-10-17 11:50:50

Yes! fortunately I have a backup of my important files so I am not worried about loosing anything. but I am not too experienced, so let me just ask: do you think any software might have caused this (maybe to do with the huge number of updates pacman did today) !?! what would your first guess be if this happened to your desktop?

graysky · 2014-10-17 12:07:56

First thing I would try to it verify that the hardware is good. Does another motherboard detect the HDD? Is it a bad data cable? Is it a bad power cable?

WorMzy · 2014-10-17 12:12:13

The amount of disk activity you experienced yesterday this morning may have been 'the straw that broke the camel's back', but the update itself won't have caused the hardware to fail.

Last edited by WorMzy (2014-10-17 12:14:18)

makhlaghi · 2014-10-17 12:31:41

I changed the cables and the SATA ports to this drive with the others and only this hard drive seems to be having a problem, the others are detected in all permutations of cable and SATA ports.

I guess so. I have done a lot of heavy data analysis (read/writes) over these 4.5 years with this hard drive and I guess the GNOME 3.14 update was the last thing It could tolerate! Thanks...

Last edited by makhlaghi (2014-10-17 12:37:29)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-10-17 11:22:54

Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

#2 2014-10-17 11:26:26

Re: Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

#3 2014-10-17 11:50:50

Re: Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

#4 2014-10-17 12:07:56

Re: Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

#5 2014-10-17 12:12:13

Re: Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

#6 2014-10-17 12:31:41

Re: Primary hard disk suddenly vanished!

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