HDD being disconnected seemingly at random

[hcpe]

Hi all, this is a weird occurrence and I have never seen it before, but I will do my best to describe the issue.

It all started a couple of months ago with an old 500GB WD HDD that would seemingly at random disconnect. It would usually still appear in explorer, but would be listed as either NTFS and empty, or RAW and completely inaccessible.
With this drive I tried chkdsk, changing sata cables, sata ports, changing drive letters and defragmenting. All failed and I eventually concluded that it was the drive failing, so bought a new one and chucked the old one.

Unfortunately after a short period of smooth sailing the same thing is happening with the new drive (2TB WD). It seems to happen most often when playing Medieval 2 Total War, which crashed then the drive disconnects. However it is just as likely that the drive is disconnecting, causing the game to crash.

I am running the WD diagnostics tool on the drive at the moment, but it has not run into any issues yet.

I have a 256GB M4 SSD, another WD 2TB green and another 500GB WD drive, all of which have had no issues at all. It has only been the old drive and its replacement, even with changing SATA cables, ports, updating sata drivers etc.

My system specs are:
CPU: i7 3700K
MB: Asrock Z-77 Extreme 4
RAM: 16GB G-Skill
HDDs/SSD listed above

If any one has any clue what might be causing this problem and how to solve it, I would be eternally grateful, it is driving me insane!

Cheers.

 

[tweakboy]

Alto you don't want to hear it, your next thing you can do is a windows repair installation and see if that fixes you up first. gl

 

[hcpe]

OK, so the WD diagnostic tool has finished its complete test, and shows that there are no issues with the drive. Which only deepens the mystery as far as I can tell...

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Sounds like a SATA port issue to me. Do you have any other available SATA ports - preferably on a different circuit?

 

[hcpe]

Hi Anita, thanks for the reply.
Yeah, I have tried it on other sata ports, including on different circuits. Currently I have it on the same sata 3 port my SSD is on, and I have still had the same issue. That being said it doesn't seem to have happened since the last time I played Medieval 2, but I truly cannot understand how a crashing program could lead to a drive being disconnected? Maybe it is corrupting the page file somehow?
Cheers.

 

[pandemonium]

So chkdsk ran a thorough scan and found zero problems? I'm guessing when you say all your troubleshooting failed, that it failed to find anything wrong. It sounds as if there is some corruption with the file table allocation...

Is the CPU overclocked? If so, revert to base clocks/voltages and see if the problem disappears.

Also, I've been using WDD drives for years and the diagnostic tools never find anything. It's worthless, heh.

 

[iluvdeal]

How large is your PSU? The drive disappearing when you game leads me to believe it might be power related.

 

[hcpe]

Yep, chdsk has found nothing.
The CPU is not overclocked, and not having any heat issues so that isn't it I don't think.
How would I check for file table corruption?

My PSU is 650W, which I would have thought would be enough? It seems strange that if it was a power problem that only 1 drive would be affected though doesn't it? I'm not sure though, power certainly isn't my area of expertise! Other games haven't caused issues, so I don't think that is it.

Thanks for the replies guys! Appreciate any input I can get!

Cheers.

 

[pandemonium]

chkdsk should find the file table corruption.

650W should be plenty. Just to be certain it's not a power issue, try a different plug on a different power rail for that HDD, though I doubt that's the case here.

Have you tried installing the game on another drive to see if it is indeed the game or that HDD? At least then you'll know for certain which is the issue.

Is the HDD's power options set to sleep or hibernate? Try setting it to never turn off.

 

[tweakboy]

DO you hear any physical noises with the HD. I think maybe you should start backing things up... be on safe side. gl

 

[iluvdeal]

As a test case, I'd try unplugging your other hard drives so you are only left with the bare minimum to test your drive and see if you can reproduce the disconnect.

 

[hcpe]

No, I haven't tried installing the game on another drive, not sure I want to if it is causing harm to drives!
How do I check the power options for hard drives in windows 7? All I can find are those stupid power profiles...

iluvdeal, I may well have to try disconnect my other HDDs to try this. I haven't had it happen pretty much since I posted this thread, which is always the way it goes. It definitely seems to have a strong randomness to it, which is what is really ticking me off.

 

[tweakboy]

Its a port problem or cable issue. What else can nit be,