INT. SATA drives keep disappearing

Hey guys

I have run into a new problem with my win7 box.

I have 20 harddrives in a win7 64b box i use as file storage, and i run flexraid on this. However, whenever the box is idle for an unspecified time, drives will dissapear.

IT is ALWAYS the same 2 drives,and they are connected to different controllers,1 is brand new,the other old.

I have tried changing cables,controllers,switched all the drives around, changed backplane on the drive cages,nothing seems to help.

I had drive dropout problems using my supermicro oac-saslpmv8,which i have now exchanged for an ibm 1015m flashed to IT mode, but the dropouts seem to continue,although different drives from when i used the supermicro.

All i can thing of that is the culprit,would be the power management in windows,as the drives in question are 2 different types WD20EARS and WD20EARX, i have disabled green function on the EARS with WDidle3,so power management should ONLY run in windows..

I have for the moment disabled win power man. to be certain this is the culprit,however,i do not like to have my drives spinning full speed when there is no traffic.

I have to shut down server completely, pull the drive,let windows boot,hot swap the drive in again,shutdown pc to get it running again. Mind you, my controller sees the drives fine,both the one connected to the IBM,and the drive connected to an Asrock 2 port SATA controller.

All hardware specs are in my signature

Anyone have any idea what the hell is happening?

Like i wrote in my original post, windows power management has been disabled completely for now, but this is not optimal for me,as i would like the drives to spin down when not in use..

I only disabled the power save for the sake of fault finding. Is there a solution to windows not mounting drives after sleep? If indeed it is win power man that is the culprit

TVeblen said:

I have not experience Windows not mounting drives after sleep. That is an unusual condition.

Disabling Windows power management is not the same as using Windows power management with the correct settings.

Which is why i am not sure it is windows power management that is the problem,but others have reported drives disappearing after sleep/idle for extended periods of time.

I have set hdd idle timer to 0 which is what i mean by disabled windows power management,for the sake of rooting out the problem.

I use the plan for best performance,then i disable all screen,network,hdd,screensaver timers. My box run headless so any form of screen timer is redundant.

So what would you suggest i use? If this is not the problem?

Layback Bear said:

I'm no expert in such matters but I do have some observation if I may.
How do you get 20 hard drives in your case? Post #1 Antec Twelve Hundred V3 Corsair GS700 Asrock H61DEL
What method do you use to hook up all 20 hard drives? Power and data harnesses.
What Windows 7/64 operating system are you using?

See my specs

TVeblen said:

I don't have any useful suggestions because I have no experience with this kind of problem. I could throw out a WAG, but sometimes those are less than useless if you don't have some experience with the problem.

I suspect this has something to do with having 20 drives connected to the system. I take it you are running some kind of server? What drives drop out - internals or the ones in the cages?

Sometimes in these kinds of cases I (personally) like to reset everything to defaults (BIOS - Windows settings) and start over. Sometimes you can just tweak yourself off the rails.

Hang tight - I'm going to turn on the bat-signal.

Hehe, well this is where it gets "hinky" i had a lot of problems with drive dropouts on my old controller,which was a known problem for that controller,and why i bought a new one, the IBM serveraid 1015M flashed to IT mode, which has worked in the sense that the dropouts now occur on different drives from before..

And ALL Drives are in cages,only boot(c), parity(Y) and drive 5(H) and drive 10(M) are connected to mainboard sata connectors, drives 1-4 and 6-9 are connected to my new IBM 1015M, the rest are connected to the asrock SATA 2port pciE cards, and here is where it gets weird

Drive 1 (D) connected to IBM dropout when using drive power management (spindown timer in windows), as does drive 15 (R) connected to one of the asrock 2port SATA pciE cards,and since these 2 drives are not same type drive d is a WD20EARS and drive R is a WD20EARX,it gets weird,and why i am getting grey hairs why this happens.

Mind you, i solely use this "server" for my movie collection,and thus it is only on whenever i want to watch a movie,and i ofcourse could run it with hdd spindown timer set to 0,but there are periods when i run it for prolonged periods of time,and thus would like some sort of power save,mostly to save the drives from spinning full speed when no traffic is needed,and thus extend their life, it is not really because of the few bucks i save on power.

Hope this all makes sense. I know a great deal about pc´s and how they work,but this problem annoys the hell out of me

Layback Bear said:

OS Windows 7 64bit// from your specs.
Window 7/64 ????
PRO, Home Premium What?
Have a nice day.

pro