Win7 loses internal hard drives ...

[pam123]

This is happening repeatedly now.
Win7 loses my 2TB hard drive "E" repeatedly.
I ran the Western Digital diagnostic and the drive is sound, it's always listed in the bios, but in Win7 at random intervals it disappears from My Computer and from Device Manager until my computer is restarted.
I've tried the suggestions about power management and they haven't helped.
I would say it's linked to iTunes but since that's the media drive it may be nothing more than coincidence.
I wondered at first if it was a matter of drive size but the answer appears to be no since second or third drives at 320 GBs are also affected, going by the post on the Win7 site that Microsoft hosts.

Here's an example : Windows 7 losing additional hard drives Part III - Microsoft Answers

Uninstalling and re-installing iTunes had no effect and neither did removing suspect files.

I'm one step away from the headache of formatting and re-installing the 'C' drive but if there's anyone who has ever dealt with this any insight that can avoid a potential mega-time loss would be greatly appreciated.
Also there's no guarantee that would work.

I have Win7 with SP1 (64 bit Home Premium) installed and until this steadily worsening problem started it had been running with only the very occasional minor hiccup.

[glc]

Pam, it might be a motherboard issue. Have you tried different SATA ports? Maybe a bios update?

[pam123]

I was checking for chipset drivers and hadn't considered the bios update so that's third on the to do list behind the Sata port switch.
Thanks glc.

[pam123]

There are three bios updates more recent than mine but they're all concerned with support for new CPUs ( If I want to upgrade to a quad core I'll have to flash the bios before I do so.).

The bios I have did the following :

M4A77D BIOS 0701 01. Improve system stability. 02. Fix the issue that HDD size may be shown incorrectly when using HDDs bigger than 2.2TB.

So a bios flash isn't likely to help.

My chipset idea was a non-starter, I already have the most recent.

Tomorrow evening I'll come home with a new SATA cable and try port switching/cable swapping.

[glc]

It wouldn't HURT to update to the latest non-beta bios.

[pam123]

I'm installing the Asus bios update utility, I'll let you know how it goes.

[glc]

There's nothing to install - use EZ Flash 2. Put the bios file on a flash drive, power the computer off, then restart it, enter the bios, and go to EZ Flash 2.

[pam123]

I went with ez flash let's see if my 'E' drive stays around.

[pam123]

Win7 seems to be behaving I hope it keeps right on doing so.

[pam123]

After working for several days I'm right back to the losing the hard drive.
Time for another run of the WD diagnostic to be followed, if necessary, by a teardown.

[GaryRouth]

Hi Pam


Just in case, if your motherboard is an Intel board new enough to have a chipset that supports the new 6Gbps SATA ports (& the latest Intel cpus as well), Intel published information concerning a flaw that causes drives connected via older 3Gbps SATA ports to degrade & possibly lose communication with the OS Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

I imagine that this is not the case for you, if you've had your system for a few years already - but I figured I'd mention it - in the odd chance your system is recent enough for the problem. Your system would probably have a second-generation i5 or i7 cpu if you have the vulnerable part.

The workaround for motherboards affected is to use only the 6Gbps ports and avoid using the 3Gbps ports (some motherboards have both). The 6Gbps ports do not experience the fault.

Best of luck,
. . . Gary


& hi there glc ... It's been a while since I've been here. Nice to see that the forum is going as strong as ever.

[glc]

Gary, according to her sig, Pam has an AMD system, and the board does not have SATA 6.0.