Hard drive disappears randomly

  1.    #1

    Hard drive disappears randomly


    I have an IDE hard drive as my secondary drive used for backups or misc files. I also have an external. But for some reaosn on Win7 x64 the IDE (labelled as D:) randomly vanishes. BIOS sees it fine allt he time. Any ideas or suggestions aside from replacing it as it is still good.
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  2. Posts : 5,747
    7600.20510 x86
       #2

    If it vanishes mysteriously, chances are it's not still good.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 3,960
    W7 x64
       #3

    OP, in (control panel) advanced power settings disable hard drive sleep, or increase the delay. This is almost certainly the cause of what you're experiencing - I doubt there's anything at all wrong with your drive...
      My Computer

  4.    #4

    Does just placing 0 int he minutes box effectivly disable hard drive sleep?
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 2,685
    Windows 7 Ultimate x86-64
       #5

    Is it connected properly to the controller, and any other IDE devices? I'd replace it with SATA II or SATA III (unlikely unless you have a new motherboard) drive and cable.
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  6. Posts : 3,960
    W7 x64
       #6

    I just entered a very large number, eg: 999 minutes... working on the basis this represents the time since the last disk read operation it doesn't mean the drive will spin down to dormant after 999 minutes - but will only spin down that long after it was last accessed.

    Sure, try zero. That may very well keep it permanently spinning, I just used a large sum because it covered my day to day requirements.

    This setting should make no difference to whether the drive is IDE or SATA.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 3
    Linux, Windows 7, Windows XP, Solaris, UNIX
       #7

    Qdos said:
    OP, in (control panel) advanced power settings disable hard drive sleep, or increase the delay. This is almost certainly the cause of what you're experiencing - I doubt there's anything at all wrong with your drive...
    Well, what if you WANT it to sleep to save power/extend the drive's life. Then how do you force it to be seen in the "Disk Management" CP applet?

    Usually my drives are there, and they wakeup when I access them. But sometimes they disappear entirely and I won't see them again unless I reboot.

    Obviously, this is extremely frustrating - I don't understand why Action -> Rescan Disks doesn't find them???
      My Computer


 

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