Hard Drives Disappear

[odatkid]

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

 

[ignatzatsonic]

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?

 

[Slartybart]

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
.

 

[Slartybart]

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

 

[odatkid]

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.)

 

[Slartybart]

Tom: Your Speccy report is from your boot into Win8. Please indicate whether this is a Win8 or a Win7 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

 

[Slartybart]

Tom, since this is Sevenforums, please boot into Win7 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

 

[Slartybart]

And while you're at it, please provide a new Speccy report when booted into Win7 - thanks

 

[odatkid]

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

 

[Slartybart]

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
.

 

[odatkid]

Hi Bill,
Thanks again for your response. I took away the "active" designation for my two storage drives, thanks to your instructions. As far as ACHI goes I believe I have it set up properly. Did the reg change and set the bios. I don't know if it's unique to this mobo but there are 5 SATA slots and the bios stipulates that if you set ACHI on the #1 port then ports 2 & 3 are also set to ACHI automatically. That leaves ports 4 & 5 open for non-ACHI and is where I have these drives connected.
Please note--the drives have worked perfectly now for the last 3 days or so.

I've attached the disk management pic.

Thanks again for your help........Tom

 

[Slartybart]

Oh dat kid - three days is promising. I'm glad things are more stable and thanks for updating the status. The fresh Disk Management looks fine.

Keep an eye on your system, post back any new occurrances. After you feel that this is satisfactorly resolved, please mark the thread as solved (just a little house keeping around here)

Yeah, I provided the AHCI tutorial as a reference in case you needed it.

Thanks,
Bill
.

 

[odatkid]

Hi Bill,
Thanks again for all your help. This is a great forum. I'll be glad to mark this resolved for housekeeping purposes but I don't think we found out why this kept occurring. Incidentally everything has been fine for 5 days now and hopefully it will continue.

Thank you again.......Tom

 

[Slartybart]

Tom, sevenforums is the best resource I've found. There's lots out there, but this one cuts to the chase and solves problems very professionally. Thanks for marking the thread solved.

Keep an eye on your machine, you can "unsolve" the thread and post any new occurrances
- but let's hope you don't have to. Your experience and knowledge made this easy.

I think this covers the solution process - can you thik of anything else?

• disconnect / reconnect sata cables
  new cables really didn't change the
• configure AHCI in BIOS
  understanding teh posrts covered by AHCI is important
  confirm drive connections on mobo
• Remove Active flag from the 2 secondary drives

Thanks,

Bill
.

 

[odatkid]

Hi Bill,
Thanks once again for the reply. Seems I spoke too soon...the drives once again disappeared. I don't know what else to do but disconnect and reconnect them. How long they stay connected is a crap-shoot [sometimes for 12 hours and sometime for days]. It's important to note that BOTH drives always go out together leading me to believe that I have a configuration issue.

Any other ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks...............Tom