Windows 7: Partition disappears after sleep (sometimes)

Hi all!



Something weird I've never seen before:

I have a partition on a spinner that keeps disappearing.
Computer goes to sleep (like I have it set up to do) and when I wake it up the partition (sometimes, not always) has vanished!

All I have to do is use Partition wizard to recover it, but it's unnerving not to mention a big annoyance.

I have run chkdsk with no errors.
I have done a full surface scan of the drive- no errors.

I use Macrium for my image backups now because I thought it was Acronis causing the problem- guess not.

I am at a loss- anyone have ideas about this?

Which partition on which drive would be the first question? You will want to post a snipping of the DM here to show how you have the drives set up.

Typically when waking a system up from sleep or coming out of hibernation device drivers, services, even explorer.exe may not fully start back up as they should. A fast full restart will usually solve any initial issues seeing everything load up fresh once again.

On the last build here one drive in particular became a phantom at times until it was found that the data cable had lifted only a little in the port at the board end following a cleaning. Once the cable was replugged all was well again! One small thing like that is often overlooked.

Thanks for your quick reply!

I don't know how to insert an image yet, so I attached the screen shot. (hope it worked)

The Y: partition is the culprit.
I don't believe there is a cable problem because the W: partition is never effected.

Re-booting doesn't help- I still have to recover the partition with Partition Wizard

The problem I was mentioning was seen on a drive only seeing one single volume when that came up. Hopefully you haven't developed any bad sectors either.

The one thing you may want to try there is changing the drive letter to get away from the last letters in the alphabet to something like K, L, M, where you left off in sucession from the second drive or use T for temp to see if the refresh will help. The lower letters are generally far more easy for Windows to recognise while S, T seem to reliable for storage/backup drives.

If the problem continues you may end up needing to back things from that partition alone and nuke it to see a brand new replacement take it's place. The partition table would be fresh if that has suffered any. One thing to ask here would if this is being seen on an internal or external drive?

This type of problem where Windows fails to see a second partition is typical with usb flash drives in general while you may be running into a similar only temp fast remedied problem if this is on an externall usb HD.

Night Hawk:
I'll try what you say and start a new partition & re-letter it.
This is an internal drive and I use it for a temporary, daily backup.
Not sure, but it may have begun doing this after I installed the SSD- it certainly never happened before then.
I guess I never made the connection, though I'm not sure why it would cause this problem.

Thanks!

If the partition has been in use for some time it may have seen some corruption in some way. If everything is found normal with the drive and not having any bas sectors then you have to consider a bad partition table to some extent. Give that a try to see how it goes anyways.

Night Hawk:

Will try your suggestions and let you know if I discover anything,
Thanks!

Night Hawk:
OK- did what you said.
Deleted the partition then re-created it.
I did keep the Y drive letter, though. that's because I would have to spend an hour re-setting all my backups to the drive.
Anyway, I'll try this for a while. If it still screws up I'll knuckle down and change the drive letter.

Thanks for your help!

The lower drive letter would be something to consider if you continue to see the same problems repeat themselves which of course would mean totally new backups as well to sync with that change. Hopefully the fresh partition will solve things for you the way it is now. Keeping fingers crossed anyways!

Night Hawk:

Second day and several re-boots later and all seems well!

Thanks for the help!