HD and SSD vanishing (after boot and along use)

yankleber · 07 Dec 2016

I have three physical drives within my computer, being two SSDs and one HD. The first SSD (120GB) has Windows and apps; the second SSD (60GB) I use to download torrents; the HD (320GB) is split in three different partitions. I have two extra USB drives connected too.

Happens that once in a while the second SSD, the HD or both just vanish! It uses to happen along the boot. I always know that there is a problem because Windows keep stuck at the flag screen for a long time (looking for drives) and when it finally loads I don't even need to open Explorer to know that the drives won't be listed. Normally restart Windows is enough to bring them back.

Lately the SSD vanished two times while it was being used. Yesterday I was making a few copies from/to it and it suddenly disappeared. This morning I was downloading something via torrent to it and it vanished again. In both times I had to COLD boot PC to have it back.

Honestly I don't think that it is an issue with the SSD or the HD although I may be wrong. I suspected that it could be a bad contact in the power/data cable; -OR- computer PS failure due to too much things hooked to it. My computer is an i5 with 8GB, and I have two SSD and one HD (internal) plus two USB HDs, an small external audio interface and a USB 3 card. I recalculated the power consuming of my computer using the OuterVision online power supply calculator (OuterVision Power Supply Calculator) and it says that the consume of my system should be no more than 217W while my power supply is a 450W one with 73% of efficiency guaranteed by the factory putting it good 100W beyond the system needs. This is a power supply with around 5 years of use though.

Any idea?

Thanks!

RolandJS · 07 Dec 2016

Windows SSD/partition's marked Active, correct?

yankleber · 07 Dec 2016

RolandJS said:

Windows SSD/partition's marked Active, correct?

I have no idea, probably yes since it's working fine. Actually this is the only internal drive that never disappear. In what it may relate with the issue?

yankleber · 08 Dec 2016

OK, I guess I found the solution.

My motherboard is the Gigabyte B75M-D3H that seems to have a known BIOS issue that makes the SATA loses the connection with secondary drives after 2 hours so there is a BIOS update that supposedly fix this. Since I am not too fan of playing BIOS update I wasn't too excited to try this solution.

Then after some extra research I found that the problem was directly associated to IDE controller and that it could be equally solved by changing to AHCI. Then I changed my BIOS settings and the immediately change I noticed was that my computer became too much more faster starting by the boot (Windows is fully loading in exactly 9 seconds); and, of course, SEEMS that the problem has gone. I am working with the computer since the last boot over 2 hours ago and the secondary SSD is still there.

I will keep observing and will post updates if the problem returns.

EDIT: I think it's official now. My computer stayed on for almost 24 hours non-stop (no reboot, no nothing) and the drive remained there. Then this morning I had to reboot it because a hotfix I installed and again it's on for around 8 hours or so and the drive is still there. I think the problem is definitively solved! As a bonus my disk access is light speed now!

Lady Fitzgerald · 08 Dec 2016

I'm glad you found the solution to the problem and thank you for sharing it with us! Who knows, maybe someone else will have this problem and will be able to fix it thanks to you sharing.