It's a WD3200AAKS, 320GB and was about 40% full at the time.
I was playing TF2, took a break and opened Firefox and the screen went white. No response from keyboard or mouse.
Upon rebooting it would freeze at the Asus logo screen (where it says to press Del to enter setup) Tried entering setup and no go. After another reboot I think it was Asus's express gate startup screen or something (sorry not sure) There I saw the words SATA 3 ERROR.
So I disconnected SATA 3 on the mainboard and the computer boots into Windows now. If I leave it plugged in, even in a different SATA port or with a different cable, the PC boots now but the drive doesn't show up. So I removed the drive all together now.
Also now during startup I no longer see "Loading Expressgate" before I see the Asus logo etc. At one point in the reboots I did see an error for "Expressgate failed to load"
Not sure if this matters, but before this happened, earlier that day I messed with Ownership and Permissions for that drive under Windows 7, wouldn't let me alter text files or overwrite files without certain permissions I guess. So I changed Ownership to Admin, and permissions to full control.
I tried a different hard drive in SATA 3 port and the port seems to be working fine.
So is it safe to assume the drive died? I had some important data on it, but nothing too serious was lost.
And should I update anything? BIOS or redownload Expressgate?
Thanks in advance.
Edited by MatCon5, 13 March 2010 - 12:17 AM.