Hard drive keeps disappearing

[Alloneword]

I run 3 SSD's 2 x Samsung boot drives and a MX500 for take images (C,D & E) but over the last few weeks my E drive just keeps on disappearing i bought DiskGenius (£70) thinking I had partition issue as disk managemengt (DM) told me i need to format the drive so i thong maybe i had lost a partition table somehow, and DG got it and all was fine for a few days, now it's going all the time, i am able to load up DG and put the partition table back and gain access to the drive with no issue for a while (after i have given a drive letter in DM) but then she will go again, i have done nothing else, i dont think replaceing cables will help but what are your thoughts, should i take everything out and replace the wiring or is there a software issue at work that others have heard of, this is how my drives stand right now,


7U x64 Asus Z87 Deluxe MB first 3 HDD runnning of the chipset of the board.


All1

 

[samuria]

Do you do images automatically or manually stop it and see if it's that doing it

 

[Alloneword]

Do you do images automatically or manually stop it and see if it's that doing it

I do them manually but the drive is dropping out while in windows sometimes when i'm doing nothing, when i take an image i always come out of windows and use a boot disk


All1

 

[torchwood]

Hi

just to check its not the drive but the connection, loose wire etc, have you tried another drive in it


Roy

EDIT it must be recognising it at boot otherwise F would be E, DM alphabetizes them in order

 

[svnfrms2r]

I do them manually but the drive is dropping out while in windows sometimes when i'm doing nothing, when i take an image i always come out of windows and use a boot disk


All1

Had the same issue, the following worked for me.
If it is a USB drive, use USBoblivion first.

Take it offline in disk management, reboot, then take it online again, then give it another drive letter, (use USBoblivion), reboot again, then give it again your chosen drive letter.

 

[torchwood]

Hi


svnfrms2r,
Thats actually a good idea, i remember know, for some reason certain drive types were eroniously treated as USB's

Roy

 

[Alloneword]

No it's not a USb drive, set up is as follows:
SATA 1 - Samsung 840Pro 128GB (Win 7 boot) C

SATA 2 - Samsung 840Pro 256GB (Win 7 boot) D

SATA 3 - Crucial MX500 1TB (This is the problem drive) E

SATA 4 - WD 1TB Black F

SATA 5 - WD 3TB Black G

SATA 6 - DVD Burner Z (yes some of us still have them in place)



I also have another 6-8 drives running of a Adaptec SAS Adapter 7805H controller card


This system has been running fine for donkeys and never any issues, when i fire up CrystalDiskInfo it gives no issues with this drive nor does Crucial own software, I do have some spare power SATA cable i could swap out but won't get a chance to do this till Tuesday daytime, i was just wondering if there was a issue within windows that i could try before opening the case up.


All1

 

[Megahertz07]

I would check the cables.
Enter BIOS to see if the MX500 is recognized on the SATA port.
When the disk isn't seen on Explorer, open Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc). Is the disk seen there?

 

[Alloneword]

It is seen in the bios with no issues, just windows is a problem, i have just had a thought i never use the 128GB windows drive it's just there as a back up if case my 256GB drive dies i will reboot into that OS and see if it's there.


Yes it's seem in DM but no letter is given to it when i right click and hit "chnage drive letter etc" i add the letter E to it which is it's normal allocation it comes up in explorer with no issues but will not stay there for long.


All1

 

[Megahertz07]

Did you checked the cables?
When it disappears from Explorer, open Disk manager. What you see?

 

[Alloneword]

Yes gets seen in the BIOS with no issues, on boot, here is a screenshot showing DM on the left with the drive in question called IMAGES but if you notice it does not have a letter next to it and on the right is windows explorer showing the drives in the system right now, after this posti will go into other OS and see what happens


All1

 

[Megahertz07]

One thing I noticed is that are a lot of disks mark as active. Active means MBR set to boot from the disk.
As the images disk isn't a boot able disk, you should mark it non active (also to all others disks without a OS)

 

[Alloneword]

Had the same issue, the following worked for me.
If it is a USB drive, use USBoblivion first.

Take it offline in disk management, reboot, then take it online again, then give it another drive letter, (use USBoblivion), reboot again, then give it again your chosen drive letter.

Well for the hell of it i have done this and we will see what happens, thanks everyone so far for trying to help.


All1

 

[Alloneword]

Well it was going well, until i rebooted and i'm back to having no E drive
Even changed drive letter and still goes missing after reboot

 

[Alloneword]

Well that didn't work either, i was abole to boot into true image with boot cd and able to create and check the image with no issues, before i check the cable etc, i have changed the drive letter from E to U to see if that makes any difference, if not I'll check the hardware cable etc and see what gives

 

[svnfrms2r]

One more thing came to mind. If there is more than one drive the same except the serial number, and the same goes for the enclosure/controller, then windows may drop additional similar drives and only work with one of those, except if you connect them as originally connected and with the same drive letters associated.
Happened to me after travels when connecting USB drives to the docking station and just plugged 1 into 2 and vice versa. One dropped, and no reboot or repeated drive letter assignment helped, only to swap the cables on one end to connect them as windows already knew from earlier connections.

 

[Alloneword]

What i don't understand is the system was working fine for years and then just gone funny.
When the drive goes missing i fire up DM and it's still there just without a letter


Considering pulling the plug and just starting from scratch right now

 

[RolandJS]

Does BIOS and MBR have a finite number of partitions it can effectively work with? I thought I read somewhere BIOS and MBR does have a limit.

 

[Alloneword]

DOn't know but it has been working for well over 18 months so doubt it will be that i do have to alter some of the partitions as MH said too many that are active

 

[RolandJS]

Yeah, my BIOS and MBR never complained (that I know of) when I have a C partition, a D partition, and four other tiny 1GB partitions for testing my ability to do first responder level data recovery