Hard drive disconnects

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Smurfatefrog

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I've searched around but haven't found any solutions or issues quite like mine:

Samsung 160GB HDD - Windows 7 home premium 32 bit - eSATA
Samsung 1TB HDD - eSATA

A couple nights ago the PC started hanging so I rebooted it and got "BOOTMGR is missing", I looked up solutions but none worked cos it couldn't find any Windows installations

on my drives. I left it & tried again the next morning, suddenly Windows booted up perfectly, but now I have this issue

The 1TB drive disconnects after between 5 secs & 2 mins whenever anything on the PC tries to use it, for example:
Copy 500MB file from 1TB HDD to 160GB HDD, copies about 100MB & then the drive disappears
Same thing copying to flash drive
Open utorrent which tries to access the files
Play a file from the drive. Browsing through folders is fine

but, if I copy the file across my network to my laptop there is no problem at all, and if I stream files to my PS3 they play perfectly

I have tried swopping eSATA cables & slots between the two drives, so don't believe that is the problem
The PC in general now hangs for minutes at a time when rebooted

Any ideas :confused:
 
Just a shot in the dark but try disabling the power management for the drives in win7.

Run a proper diagnostics scan on the drives to see if anything pops up.
 
I would suggest you try replacing the sata data and power cables for the drives first. Your existing cables could be damaged and are causing intermittent connectivity to the drive, which would explain the symptoms you are describing.
 
Also check your power source - I had an external power pack that was a bit dodgy and it caused disconnects on my eSata and USB3 external 3.5" HDD's - replaced the power pack and all is well again...

If it's internal HDD's then check the PSU outputs on the HDD cables.
 
If there is a problem with the SATA/eSATA cable you should see a large number of Ultra DMA CRC Errors (Samsung) in the SMART data for the drive. There should be a similarly named parameter for other brands of hard drives. The SMART data can usually be read using this application ...
http://hddscan.com/
 
Last edited:
I changed SATA cables & power cables during the week, same problems

Yotch, I ran the Smart scan & did give give DMA CRC errors, but from what I read this show past read errors?

Today it started freezing again, so I did a fresh W7 install. Now its just freezing & rebooting after a few mins :(
Could it actually be my Windows drive that is going?
 
How many hard drives are you running and how big is your power supply ??
 
I suspect that it is the power supply - like FNfal.

A friend of mine also started having issues where his hard drives would 1-by-1 stop being picked up by his BIOS.
He eventually fixed it by simply running his drives from external power supplies, so clearly his PSU's age is catching up quite fast.
 
For example, I just installed AVG, it downloaded 55.9 of the 56mb file during the installation process, it stayed on 55.9mb for a couple minutes then just gave a quick error message before rebooting. On the reboot it didn't find any drives, needed another reboot

ponder said:
It's possible, run MHDD on it.
Click to expand...
Thanks, will try that just now when it decides to stop hanging

FNfal said:
How many hard drives are you running and how big is your power supply ??
Click to expand...
230W
3 internal HDDs & 1 optical drive, been like this for about 18 months
 
@SAF: Yes the Ultra DMA CRC error count is a record of the number of past CRC errors on the SATA interface. You must just make a note of the current value and make sure that it is not increasing. Maybe you could try to boot using an Ubuntu Live CD and test the USB ports to see whether you are still having problems - this should bypass any possible Windows issues etc.
 
Smurfatefrog said:
For example, I just installed AVG, it downloaded 55.9 of the 56mb file during the installation process, it stayed on 55.9mb for a couple minutes then just gave a quick error message before rebooting. On the reboot it didn't find any drives, needed another reboot


Thanks, will try that just now when it decides to stop hanging


230W
3 internal HDDs & 1 optical drive, been like this for about 18 months
Click to expand...
230 W is not a lot of power try disabling another H/drive and see if you have the same problem with the culprit drive
 
That many hard drives on such a cheap and small + oldish power supply is taking a big risk.

I would suggest you do as FNfal said, and disconnect a few other drives and see if that doesn't fix the disconnect problem.

Alternatively, plug in the faulty HDD(s) in another PC with a big and decent PSU and see if they behave the same.

Another idea would be to borrow a decent + higher wattage PSU and install that in your PC.
 
An update:
My Windows drive kept hanging & stopping downloads at 99% so I disconnected that drive & installed W7 on another drive. No more freezing or hanging, but the 1TB drive still disconnects in the same situations.
Thinking of installing W7 on the 1TB drive & seeing if it disconnects...
 
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