Internal hard disk beeping then partition disappears

I've a 500 GB internal hard disk. Now since yesterday I hear beeping sound from disk for 10 minutes and then partitions on it would disappear.

I also saw this error : The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort2.

I tried rebooting many times but same result. Only once did I hear some friction noise in the hard disk for a couple of minutes.

Today I booted again and it work normally for 2-3 hours and the same problem started and partitions disappeared.

Though I've backed up everything on it, what could be the problem?

Solution 1:

First thing to do is back up anything you want/need as the drive could fail.

Most drive vendors offer a free diagnostic tool that will run a full suite of diagnostics and determine the issue. As noted by @jdh, you should return if under warranty but most will want you to run the diagnostic tool to get an error code.

You may want to run the test multiple times if the issue seems to only appear after a period of time. Most utilites like SeaTools and WinDLG allow multiple runs of the diagnostic.