TOPIC: Hard Drive Disappeared, Started Working Again, the

2 weeks ago my old hard drive finally died out, so I had the local tech dude install me another one, it worked perfectly for a couple of days, until...

Yesterday I turned on my PC and it took longer than usual to boot, after it booted only my ssd was there... I checked the disk drives in the device manager and it said unknown device right under my ssd

I turned the power off and opened up the case to see if maybe the cables were loose, but they were not, I still decided to unplug the cables from the hard drive, boot up without them, then power off and re-plug them

And it worked! everything loaded perfectly, it was fast, and my PC recognised them normally

Fast forward to today's morning, and the problem is back... Naturally I tried to do the exact same thing as yesterday, unplug and plug again, only this time it didn't work, and I swear the hard drive didn't even try spinning

I restarted and opened up BIOS, and only my ssd was there, and where my hard drive should've been now says "empty"

Here's what I tried to do next, I turned off my PC, and I reconnected the SATA cable but this time I started pressing hard on it and kept applying pressure, I turned the power on, and the hard drive actually tried spinning, I could hear it click a couple of times, but then it went silent, and it still was not getting recognised

I'm not really that tech savvy, but the hard drive is pretty new and was working perfectly, could the problem reside in the motherboard? Or maybe it's just one of the cables? Do I need a new hard drive?

Probably your cables or one of the connectors, just make sure that none of the connectors are bent. I highly doubt it would be the hard drive itself.

Try swapping your SATA power/data cables with new or different ones. I'd also try using different SATA headers on your motherboard (like the one your SSD is using).

That way you'll be able to diagnose where the problem is.