Windows 7: Hard Drives Disappear

Hi All,
I have 3 drives installed on my PC (1) solid state drive for the O.S. Win 7 Pro; dual booting on a VHD Win 8 Pro (which I really like). The other two SATA drives are for storage (1) 500 gig partitioned in two and (1) 320 gig not partitioned.
Here's my problem: Periodically the SATA drives will dissappear and the only way to get them back is to shutdown my PC and disconnect them from the MOBO and then plug them back in. When I restart they reappear. This happpens from time to time but without a trigger that I'm aware of.
I've tested both drives and they are healthy and I'm at a loss why this happens.

Any ideas?



Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks........Tom

Have you contacted ASUS support?

Have you checked ASUS downloads for your motherboard to see it there is a BIOS update that addresses this problem?

Have you tried other ports and/or cables?

Tom: please post a screen shot of your Disk Management

Please also publish a Speccy report (file menu -> publish after Speccy gathers all info)

Is this an Asus machine or did you build it?
If Asus, please include model in your specs, otherwise indicate that it is home built.

Thanks,

Bill
.

Tom,

Please run Speccy again and this time, don't save the report... publish it from the Speccy file menu.
Copy the URL Speccy gives you, then
edit your post# 3 (Speccy text output) and delete the Speccy text report
Type something like Here's my Speccy output and link that text to the URL Speccy gave you.

There are two reasons for doing it this way
1) Privacy - Speccy strips out stuff before posting on the Piriform server
2) Readability.

Thanks

Hi and Thanks for the replies,

I want to be clear that the SSD boot drive never falters only the other two. I built this machine and the specs you requested are here.


This was done on 11/6/2012 on the Win 8 VHD:


Thank you again......Tom

P.S. I changed the sata cables out and the drives are working now; for how long is the question.
PPS: The new cables didn't help. The drives disconnected in about a hour. I unplugged them and plugged them back in and they have been working so far (about 24 hrs.)

Tom: Your Speccy report is from your boot into Win8. Please indicate whether this is a Win8 or a Windows 7 issue.

Please describe how the drives are cabled to the Asus M4A785TD-M EVO mobo


Please also provide a Disk management screenshot as previously requested
close the action pane and the navigation pane, then maximize the window - thanks

Tom, since this is Sevenforums, please boot into Windows 7 and we'll work that issue. If you also experience the problem when you boot into Win8, post on Eightforums.com. But let's see if we can't solve it on the main OS.

Your drives are listed in Speccy as

Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
ATA Channel 0
--> _NEC DVD_RW ND-2500A ATA Device
--> TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M ATA Device

ATA Channel 1
--> WDC WD3200AAKS-75L9A0 ATA Device
--> WDC WD5001AALS-00L3B2 ATA Device

And while you're at it, please provide a new Speccy report when booted into Windows 7 - thanks

Thank you for your reply.
My new speccy report run from the Win 7 side can be found here. I've attached the screen capture of my disk management. For what it's worth I created the VHD for Win 8 on the SSD. The other two drives disconnect periodically on both win 7 AND win 8.

When I set my mobo Asus (M4A785TD-M EVO) for ACHI (for the SSD) the setting covers the first three sata ports so I have to connect the other two hard drives in 4th and 5th slots.
Incidentally the drives have worked seamlessly for the last 36 hours or more.
I really appreciate your help and hope I've provided all the info you need........Tom

Great Tom,

Just to be sure
Disk 1
- New Volume D:\

and

Disk 2
- New Volume G:\
- New Volume J:\

are both storage disks, you do not boot from those drives - correct?

Those drives need to be set inactive if only used for storage.
Only Disk 0 - SSD (C:\) should be active.

The following commands are based on the Disk Management screen shot you posted. Do not change the drives or it will invalidate the commands given below. When you're done - post a new disk management - thanks

In an elevated Command Prompt (right click, run as administrator)

diskpart

list disk
select disk 1
list disk

list part
select part 1
list part

inactive
detail part

list disk
select disk 2
list disk

list part
select part 1
list part

inactive
detail part

exit

---

You say you enabled AHCI and have been running stable. Take a look at this tutorial on AHCI,
but DO NOT change anything. Your system is stable for the moment.

Marking the two storage drives inactive won't destablize it, but mucking around in BIOS at this point might.

After I see the new Disk Management image and everything looks good, I'll ask someone to look at the AHCI configuration with you.

Oh and thanks for the additional information, it does help. You're doing great, kid

Bill
.