SATA HD Disappearing

Greetings!

I have 2 HDs on my system. The primary is a Western Digital WDC WD10EADS-22M2B0 (1 TB) and the secondary is a Western Digital WDC WD5000AAVS-00ZTB0 (500 GB) external. Both SATA. My primary OS is Windows 7 Home Premium.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the 500G and install it as an internal drive, which seemed to work fine for about 20 minutes, then the drive just disappeared and was no longer visible to the OS. I checked all of my connections and BIOS settings and everything seemed fine. And when I booted the drive was detected by the BIOS and the OS. However, it would only be there for anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours.

After rebooting several times I started getting errors before Windows even loaded. Things like "driver conflict" errors and something like "Could not load operating system from boot path "˜D:\WINDOWS’" (when my boot path is C:\WINDOWS). Finally, the drive just stopped being recognized by Windows even though the hardware found it. It’s almost like even the system knew it is drive D: it kept trying to set it to C:

So, I took the drive out of the computer and put it back in its external case. Plugged it back into a USB port and everything worked again...for awhile. Every now and then the drive would disappear. I’d switch off the power on the external drive and back on, then the drive would show up again.

The issue keeps persisting and seems to be happening more frequently. I should note that I have a 20 gig partition on my primary drive (the WD 1T) with ubuntu installed. I ran the computer under ubuntu for a couple of days both with the 500 gig drive internal and external and had no problems at all, so I’m thinking the issue is with the Windows settings.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Brian

 

Hi Brian, as an expert I'm sure you understand the importance of exact error messages quoting things like & something like just really isn't enough.

Please supply the error messages as you see them, also...

We encourage all members to enter their system details, it could help resolving this and any future issues you may have.

 

My system details are up to date. As for the error messages, they appear quite at random and I have not been able to reproduce them exactly.

 

Your system details may well be up to date but we can't see them (read the link again)

As far as the errors are concerned when they next appear please take notes and post.

 

My apologies. I didn't realize my system details were not being displayed. Thanks for the info.

Brian

 

Cheers

Whilst waiting for the errors to reoccur I'd suggest running Western Digital's Diagnostics on your (now?) external drive. Also have you noticed any date/time errors (perhaps your CMOS battery may need replacing)?

 

External drives can have software that changes the drive information so that it can run as an encrypted drive. Did the drive install software? Look in Control Panel -> Programs and Features.

If the drive (WD) installed software, it is made to work as an external drive. If you take the drive out of the case and put it into a computer I expect the software could/would malfunction.

Matt

 

Yes, the drive is now external. I've run all the diagnostic software I can find (both windows and Linux) and no errors reported. The CMOS battery is fine. I'm 99% sure it's not a hardware issue because the drive works fine under Linux. It only disappears while running Windows.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Matt. I checked the "Programs and Features" control panel and no Western Digital software to be found.

 

So why are we in the Hardware Forum

Best to wait until you post the Errors, it may enlighten your dilemma. Post them when you have them.

 

It sounds like there might not be any WD software, but check around a little more if you think software is the problem. For example, are there icons in the Notification Tray (next to the time), say, when the external drive is connected. Are there any backup programs installed that would relate to the drive?

Do you have any other drive software installed, one I might think about is for making virtual CD/DVD drives. They can malfunction.

If it seems to be a software problem, start checking for what software you have that could be involved. We should learn more when you have the error messages.

Matt