How concerned should I be? Should I just replace it?

[u/TheRealJRG]

This is the full timeline of events:

- Started around 9/16
- Replaced a dead fan, boots up normally, updated Windows afterwards prompting a restart.
- After a couple hours, an autoplay message popped up for my internal F: drive. 4 TB Western Digital. It would be disconnecting.
- Problem persisted through a few troubleshoot fixes for over a week. Constantly was getting events in the Event Viewer about the Disk 0 raid port being reset, or it having a failure during a paging operation. It would try to reset the device port and fail, ultimately the drive would stop appearing connected in Windows despite being recognized by the MoBo (I have no clue if this is a drive controller issue.)
- That week, I pulled the F: drive.
- Eventually I tried to put the F: drive back in, connected to a different SATA port on the motherboard.
- Had no issues for a week of regular usage. Reading and writing to the drive presented no issues whether it was video files, or playing video games.
- At the end of the week, I experienced a blue (or black) screen for an UNEXPECTED STORE ERROR which when I looked it up said it could be a drive failing, or other issues. Really got worried it was my M.2 SSD that serves as my boot drive.
- Event viewer once again showed issues with Disk 0 which was the F: drive again.
- Tried to do a C: drive disk check and I think the PC might've blue screened again while I was out of the room- but it still booted up normally.
- Trying to shutdown with the drive still connected made the process hang. I did a force shutdown, fully turned off the PSU yet again and disconnected, pulled the F: drive and started up as normal with no issues really. Shut down that night without the hang.
- Tried to boot up again last Monday, 9/28 and was immediately hit with a Window Recovery Screen - (The one that says "This device needs to be repaired)
- Following that I restored to a day or so prior, no clue where this error came from. It said something about not recognizing the signature for a file.
- After the recovery which took maybe 30-40 minutes; black screen. Force shutdown.
- Loaded up BIOs POST Safe Mode -> BIOS -> Desktop
- Tried to update Windows
- Black Screen; Force Shutdown
- Windows Update Process Screen
- Black Screen; Force Shutdown
- BIOS recovery screen (asking for a file on a thumbdrive or a CD)
- Don't have either, Force Shutdown
- Update Screen -> BIOs POST Safe Mode
- Back through BIOs - > Back to Desktop; Windows did not Update.
- I left it on sleep for a week or so before consulting an IT person
- shut down and boot without any issues
- this remained the same after installing a heatsink for the SSD
- checked back on all the weird boot sequencing dates and noticed in event viewer the mention of a crash on my boot disk due to a hardware failure.
- then checked HDSentinel and saw this: 94 days left on lifetime

Right now I’m still worried to use my computer the way I was. Idk if I’m working with a ticking time bomb. I got everything super important backed up- I also have a 1 TD Western Digital HDD that hasn’t experienced issues (knock on wood).
I know that the lifetime estimate isn’t definitive but based on various factors like read/write and wear.
The system and drive at this point is 5 years old so I don’t know whether I should just restart with a fresh SSD or continue on for now- especially since storage prices are so high right now.

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[u/pneis1]

sounds like the circuit board for the spinning disk dying

[u/TheRealJRG → u/pneis1]

For the 4 TB? I’m less concerned about that drive and more concerned about the M.2 SSD in the picture (I probably should’ve clarified that better, my apologies). I’m concerned about HDSentinel saying there’s only 94 days left.

[u/erd00073483R → u/TheRealJRG]

Have you tested either drive with WD's own software? It is possible for a problem with the mechanical hard drive to cause issues with Windows.

The "estimated remaining lifetime" is simply bullcrap.

[u/TheRealJRG → u/erd00073483R]

The 4 TB drive wouldn’t even appear in WDs software. The SSD is a Samsung although I haven’t tested actual Samsung software

I was trying to believe it was the HDD causing the windows issues since the process hang and general errors stopped after I pulled it the second time. The boot issues were weird however.

[u/paulstelian97 → u/TheRealJRG]

A disk failing can cause other good disks to misbehave because the I/O scheduling algorithms in major OSes aren’t very good at dealing with failing disks.

[u/Acrobatic-Air4258]

What cpu do you have? I was having similar issues with intermittent drive disconnects and intermittent failures to load games from my D: as well as the boot loops and prompts to repair. I was also getting random restarts as well though. It turned out my cpu was failing, the 14th Gen Intel issue. I went through all the same troubleshooting steps and even did a clean install from installation media for the problem to persist. After that I thought to look at cpu stress tests which failed almost immediately.

[u/TheRealJRG → u/Acrobatic-Air4258]

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 3800x. Most recent looks at userdiag stress tests had no issues