Hard drive occasionally not shown

[Poissionnariat]

Having a minor issue with a hard drive I own. I have 4 hard drives

x2 Hitachi Deskstar 500gb Sata hdds
1 Samsung 640gb Sata hdd
1 Western Digital 320gb Sata hdd

Now the issue,

On a cold boot, all but the WD hdd will boot up and be recognized by Windows. The WD hdd wont even show as connected hardware in the device mgr let alone be shown in the devices under My Computer. BUT, upon a restart, the hard drive is shown once Windows boots back up on a warm boot, accessible and all. Dont understand it and dont think the WD hdd is going bad. Maybe a hardware expert can shed some light on this scenario.

Thanks

[Computer_Commando]

The symptoms you describe indicate BIOS is not recognizing WD drive.  See if BIOS recognizes WD hard drive.

[Poissionnariat]

I checked my BIOS and verified all 4 hard drives within my BIOS in their sata configurations, whether they be master/slave and which sata channel they were on. As I previously mentioned, the hard drive will boot up on a cold boot but wont show in Windows. During POST I watch my computer display the hard drives/optical drive that are verified and connected and all show up but when it comes to Windows time to load up, the hard drive isnt there to access BUT after a restart shortly after that, the hard drive shows up. And even more wierd, I started up this morning on a cold boot and checked and it showed up on a cold boot. Why is the problem scattered about? I dont understand at all, lol. Why is this thing behaving so erratically?

[Allan]

Next time it does NOT appear in Windows, take a look in Disk Management and see if it's there.

[jason2074]

Try checking your SATA cable for the troubled HD. Swap to check if the issue is persistent.

http://www.ehow.com/about_5679067_sata-cable-problems.html

[patio]

I smell an immenent HDD failure...but i could be wrong.

[OpenSource]

I agree with jason, try swapping the cables.

Also you can burn a program called drive fitness test to an ISO cd to test the drives.

[Poissionnariat]

Just a minor update. I swapped sata cables and the drive is still not showing up during a cold boot. Neither in My Computer or disk management. Gunna get a fitness test burned to cd and give that a go. Will post another update after that.

[Poissionnariat]

Alright, heres a final update. Did a fitness test on it (Quick and extended). Nothing came back. Drive is supposedly doing just fine. So I went ahead and did a full erase and wrote zeros the the entire disk. Just formatted it. Gunna see what happens after this.

[Allan]

Next time it does NOT appear in Windows, take a look in Disk Management and see if it's there.

[Poissionnariat]

Well, from first boot today it hasnt shown up. Looked in disk management and it wasnt shown in there, so Allan, whats next? Or anybody for that matter.

[Computer_Commando]

Intermittent bad SATA connection at the drive interface or the motherboard interface.  Not much you can do except swap things around.  I've got one that did the same thing until I found a computer it was "happy" in.