Samsung HD103SJ was undetected by Asrock Mobo.

[Turkle]

Hello,

I've had a weird problem that I have almost solved but I need some help on understanding what happened. I moved my whole system (lynnfield i5, p55 chipset to fx piledriver, 970 chipset).
Everything was fine except the HD103SJ being undetected most of time in BIOS and OS. Sometimes it would be detected after a few reboots. When in OS after detection I could not install anything on any hard drive and the pc did give one BSOD along with a boot loop another time. Also, the OS was corrupted once and would not boot until an hour long error check (Win8) which sent it back to a restore point.

After the HDD is detected I can only use it until the next power on. Which caused the HDD to make horrible noises like trying to spin up but fail and grind. I though it was dead. I managed to make it spin up only after unplugging and replugging the SATA power cable in BIOS only. This would cause it to spin up and work normally in OS and allow installations. I then found out that this particular Asrock board (extreme 3 970 r2.0) has problems with certains Samsung HDDs. I then updated the firmware which fixed all of these issues (so far!).

Sorry for the long and incoherent background story but here is my question.

The smart data obtained from HD Tune still shows a FAIL on the Spin up time yet the HDD works fine as far as I can tell. Is it risky to use it as storage? Somehow I don't believe the test results.

Cheers.

[AndrewPoole]

It sounds like a faulty HDD to me. The grinding noise is a bad sign and the fact that it doesn't spin up is another.

I would check the HDD on another motherboard to be 100% sure but prepare to send it back.

[shaithis]

Odd one, I'd expect a controller failure if it wasn't being seen, although the spin-up and grindings issues point to motor.....either way it sounds like a dying HDD.

[mikeo01]

Possibly. I had the SpinPoint which once updated to the lasted firmware fixed the grinding, clicking and not being detected in the BIOS/Windows.

Least it's obtaining SMART data from the HDD. Take a look at the SMART data yourself see what's going on. It probably killed itself before you updated the firmware. Many people have had problems with the F3s on AMD chipsets and reporting the drive basically totalling itself out unfortunately.

Warranty?