Question Drive keeps disappearing

[Swampthing]

I have 2 nvme drives, 2 SSD drives and an old spin drive that I keep for backups.

Recently one of the SSD's, a WD blue keeps just randomly disappearing anytime I do any kind of sustained writes to it. For instance patching a game with a large patch. This SSD is my D drive.

I've run SMART on it with no errors, the WD dash shows 99% health. Event viewer no errors. The drive just stops being recognized by windows AND the bios. Usually a full shutdown and off for a minute or so and power up will bring hte drive back but again any sustained writes to the drive....GONE! I've changed the SATA cable, moved it to another port (motherboard is relatively new btw, just put it in like 5 months ago)....Updated the drives firmware, my system bios....

Now strangely enough, the old western digital spin drive did the same thing. It's ONLY hte two WD drives in my system that are having issues.

Anyone seen a problem like this before and have any ideas?

 

[Tech Junky]

I've been playing with a few drives or the past couple of months and use Linux. When the OS boots it assigns drive numbers like nvme0/1/2/3 and it's a bit random depending on which one it sees first. I had to switch the mappings to use the uuid instead of the logical mapping to stabilize things.

I did one setup with a total of 5 drives and 1 as the OS and 4 in a raid and that didn't confuse the mappings. I switched gears though to a 2.5" nvme and went through 2 of them dropping like yours but, they didn't come back so I sent them back. My third attempt with a different brand and more troubleshooting showed an issue with the slot and switched slots and stills an issue so I rebuild the system and switched from Intel to AMD. Because dropping another $200 on a mobo to fix the issue didn't make sense w/o an upgrade. I just fired it up last night though and the errors on the Intel room a couple of days to show up so, it's a waiting game to see if this resolved it or not.

My guess is the mobo or Windows being the issue for you though. Windows is a bit less finicky though in mappings of drives. Could be a uefi issue though too. My new board would hang on boot until I updated it and then just started working after the update.

 

[Swampthing]

i'm leaning to it NOT being a windows issue since the bios wont even detect the drive when this happens. It's SUPER strange that it's just the western digital drives doing it though. I have a new crucial drive coming today, going to hook it to the same cable and power and see if it does the same thing or not.

Starting to think it's some kind of weird incompatibility with the WD drives and the mboard.

 

[Tech Junky]

Starting to think it's some kind of weird incompatibility with the WD drives and the mboard.

I use WD primarily as my OS drives and they've been rock solid.

It could be something like Intel RST causing an issue. OS though might be the cause to drop out and not showing in UEFI could be another issue if the drive is overheating and thus the power down for a couple of minutes allows the drive to reset and come back online.

In my case the drives would just sort of go into limp mode and a reboot would drop them completely from being able to be partitioned though they would show up electrically connected. I tested them in 2 different systems and neither could repartition and get data back on the drives. The first two attempts I was using PCB mounting for the drives direct to the PCIE slot and the 3rd I switched to a different approach using a card + cable.

The two drives that failed on me were Micron 7450 and the one that's still working for a couple of weeks is Kioxia. The first drive failed within hours of being inserted into the system. The second one barely lasted a week. So, I'm hoping this is solved with the rebuild as these drives being 16TB SSD / NVME are a real PITA to swap out and tie up $1000+ and waiting on refunds on returns while shipping the replacements. In the market of these U2/U3 drives the selection is limited and not a consumer option w/o finding ways to make them work. But, the payoff is more storage density for less than M2 format. M2's only hit 8TB and run $800 while the U options can be as high as 30/60TB but, the 16TB being $300 more than the M2 and double the capacity just makes more sense.

 

[In2Photos]

Any chance the 2 WD drives are on the same power cable from the PSU? Have you tried using a different power cable?

 

[igor_kavinski]

Any chance the 2 WD drives are on the same power cable from the PSU? Have you tried using a different power cable?

My suspicion is the PSU too. OP should try a spare PSU to see if the problem goes away.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I have a new crucial drive coming today, going to hook it to the same cable and power and see if it does the same thing or not.

It's possible the PSU is supplying unclean power with a lot of spikes. Even if the Crucial drive has better tolerance for the spikes and works flawlessly, long term that PSU is detrimental to the health of all components in your PC, if it is indeed the PSU that is the culprit. The drive disappearing is possibly a protection mechanism to prevent permanent damage.

 

[Shmee]

I was also suspecting PSU perhaps, at least as a possibility. Or maybe not the PSU itself, but an issue with one or more SATA power connections. What PSU are you using and how old?

 

[Swampthing]

2 of the WD drives are on the same power cable with a sandisk drive that isn't being affected. Put the new drive on that same cable and have done multiple installs with no issues. The 2 drives that were having issues on the same powerline....one was at the begging of the line and the other the end with the sandisk in the middle.

It's a quality 750w power supply that i've had for a year now.

 

[Swampthing]

new drive just started doing it now as well. Sigh....

 

[igor_kavinski]

new drive just started doing it now as well. Sigh....

Gotta try a different PSU now. Even Seasonic PSUs crap out.

 

[Tech Junky]

new drive just started doing it now as well. Sigh....

I don't think it's the drives or the power. The 3rd drive in the same power cable is the indicator. Follow the path here backwards.

Drive > SATA cable > mobo sata port.

The stable drive I'm assuming you haven't moved the SATA cable during this adventure and thus it's still stable.

 

[Swampthing]

I've tried the "bad" drives in the good drives sata port. Still have the problem. It was the first and third drive on the power chain, removed the first drive entirely. Have moved the SATA cable a few times.

On the bright side, i KNOW it's not the drive now. Only thing left is PS and Mboard. Replacing the PS today.

 

[Swampthing]

Well i think i'm calling this fixed. Just installed forza on one of the drives that kept failing and no issues through the entire install. Ended up just replacing the PS and motherboard. I'm pretty sure it was the motherboard causing the problem.

 

[Tech Junky]

motherboard

Glad you got it working again.