What would cause an internal HD to simply disappear in Windows?

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:


Well, considering that the error showed up with both an IDE and a
SATA drive, it may have something to do with the motherboard's disk
controller subsystem.

There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn your
disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where the disc
controller is. The motherboard contains merely a PCI-to-ATA bridge.

There is a disk controller, it just has the form of a communications
controller, not a disk hardware controller. It still does things like
DMA transfer and PCI interfacing.

If it's controlling comms, then it's clearly not a disc controller. Think!

It isn't a comms controller really, of course. It is, as stated, a
bridge between two buses, the PCI bus and the ATA bus, with a bit of
support circuitry so that it can be a programmable busmaster on the former.

If there's a problem with a PCI-to-ATA bridge,

Such a thing does not exist.

Your PC begs to differ with you, kiddo. Every time that there's an I/O
R/W transaction on your PCI bus (matching the port ranges specified in
PCI configuration space for the function, of course), your PCI-to-ATA
bridge is happily translating that into a R/W cycle on your ATA bus,
using the data and address lines, chip selects, and R/W strobe lines
that exist on the (parallel) ATA bus just as they do on many other
computer buses. And this will continue to be, however much you protest
its nonexistence on Usenet.

Condensation will get you nowhere. Also check my sig if you think
I am a kid.

Arno

--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
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----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:


There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn your
disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where the disc
controller is. The motherboard contains merely a PCI-to-ATA bridge.

Yes, yes, we all know that, [...]

Apparently not. M. Arno and M. Speed don't, it seems. It's
disappointing in the former case.

I just happen to know what a bridge is and what a controller is.
That it is a "disk communications controller" does not really matter
here. But a bridge would never need a driver for anything, as it is
invisible on the software side (whith the exception of timing effects).
Also addressing on the PCI bus is different from ATA addressing, which
also means it cannot be only a bridge.

Incidentially, this question is besides the point.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn
your disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where the
disc controller is. The motherboard contains merely a PCI-to-ATA
bridge.

Yes, yes, we all know that, [...]

Apparently not. M. Arno and M. Speed don't, it seems. It's
disappointing in the former case.

I just happen to know what a bridge is and what a controller is.

No, kiddo, you really don't in this case. And as I said, that's
disappointing in your case. Think! If ever you find yourself with the
same (mis-)understanding of hardware as Rod Speed has, alarm bells
should be going off.

That it is a "disk communications controller" does not really matter
here. But a bridge would never need a driver for anything, as it is
invisible on the software side (whith the exception of timing effects).

I've news for you. Not only do PCI-to-ATA bridges have drivers, but
even PCI-to-PCI bridges have drivers. On Windows NT, for example, the
latter are driven by the PCI.sys driver. The idea that bridges don't
need drivers is not in accordance with what you'll find actually
happening on your PC. And the consequent idea that if something has a
driver it cannot be a bridge is, accordingly, nonsense.

Also addressing on the PCI bus is different from ATA addressing, which
also means it cannot be only a bridge.

Two different buses bridged together aren't required to have the same
addressing, kiddo. That's often the point of their being two different
buses that require a bridge connecting them.

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:


There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn your
disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where the disc
controller is. The motherboard contains merely a PCI-to-ATA bridge.

Yes, yes, we all know that, [...]

Apparently not. M. Arno and M. Speed don't, it seems. It's
disappointing in the former case.

If you're going to be completely pedantic about it, and continue on with
the networking analogy, then "bridge" isn't necessarily the right term
either. In the case of a RAID arrangement, then it's acting more like
router. In the case of an ATAPI device, it's acting more like a gateway.

Yousuf Khan

There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn
your disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where
the disc controller is. The motherboard contains merely a
PCI-to-ATA bridge.

Yes, yes, we all know that, [...]

Apparently not. M. Arno and M. Speed don't, it seems. It's
disappointing in the former case.

If you're going to be completely pedantic about it, and continue on
with the networking analogy, [...]

It's not a networking analogy. Things that connect computer buses are
known as bridges, bus bridges if there's scope for confusion with any
other sorts of bridges. There are many sorts, because many computer
buses have been connected together over the years, from Unibus to the
VESA Local Bus. In the world of PCI we have PCI-to-ISA bridges,
PCI-to-ATA bridges, PCI-to-PCI bridges, and of course the bridge between
PCI bus 0 and the processor bus.

In the case of an ATAPI device, [...]

In the case of an ATAPI device, the actual bus is still an ATA bus. The
bus itself isn't any different. (If it were, after all, one wouldn't be
able to correctly connect the device to the cable.) Nor is the
PCI-to-ATA bridge connecting it to the PCI bus any different. The
difference between ATA and ATAPI is in the disc unit itself, at the disc
unit command level and (to a lesser extent) the disc unit device
register level, not at the bus level. The bus is the same, and the
bridge is the same.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote:


There is no disc controller on the motherboard with IDE drives.
That's what Integrated Drive Electronics means, after all. Turn your
disc unit over. See the chips and circuitry? That's where the disc
controller is. The motherboard contains merely a PCI-to-ATA bridge.

Yes, yes, we all know that, [...]

Apparently not. M. Arno and M. Speed don't, it seems. It's
disappointing in the former case.

If you're going to be completely pedantic about it, and continue on with
the networking analogy, then "bridge" isn't necessarily the right term
either. In the case of a RAID arrangement, then it's acting more like
router. In the case of an ATAPI device, it's acting more like a gateway.

Indeed. A bridge is ISO/OSI layer 2, which means same addressing
on both sides, but potentially different speeds, collision domains
or bus access arbitration. An important factor is here that both
connected networks can initiate transfers and are generally considered
to be on the same hierachical level. I agree on the router and gateway
analogy.

As addressing is different on PCI and (S)ATA, and the disks are
certainly not on the same hierachical level as the computer side,
the term "bridge" goes out the window.

In a hierachical situation the device is generally called a
"controller", since it has power over what is attached to it,
i.e. "controls" it.

With regard to ISO/OSI layers, "bridge" would also not qualify,
as due to DMA, NCQ, etc., the PC side disk controller is at
least on Layer 3, possibly higher.

Arno
--
Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email:
GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
----
Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans

Yousuf Khan;897003 Wrote:
Something strange just happened recently, under Windows 7, although I
have seen it happen under Windows XP before too. A hard drive that's
internal (i.e. always there, not physically removable), just
disappeared
from Windows sight. No longer accessible, HD Sentinel didn't see it
either. Rebooted, and everything was fine, it came back. But there were

no warnings in SMART about that drive. Is there something in the
Windows
logs that I can see about this?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf,

Have you checked the Windows logs? Also, have you performed a chkdsk
scan to ensure the root of this issue is not hardware related?

Should you require additional assistance and guidance, Microsoft does
have an official Windows 7 Support Forum located here
http://tinyurl.com/ydy43c3 . It is supported by product specialists as
well as engineers and support teams.

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team




--
JessicaD

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Something strange just happened recently, under Windows 7, although I
have seen it happen under Windows XP before too. A hard drive that's
internal (i.e. always there, not physically removable), just disappeared
from Windows sight. No longer accessible, HD Sentinel didn't see it
either. Rebooted, and everything was fine, it came back. But there were
no warnings in SMART about that drive. Is there something in the Windows
logs that I can see about this?

Yousuf Khan


Looks like I've had another recurance of this problem on Windows 7, just
over 3 weeks later. The same issues again, I got an Event ID 15 on the
Disk subsystem in device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1. And also just like
before, I got a simultaneous Event ID 11 on the ATAPI subsystem in
device \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

Now, I don't think that there is actually anything wrong with the DVD
drive, corresponding to event id 11 on \Device\Ide\IdePort0. There was
only one instance of that message, but there were six instances of the
event id 15. Plus there was nothing in the DVD drives at the time to
read, so I think the event 11 is just a spurious message by a confused
system. As a test, I also tried reading a disk from that DVD drive
later, and it was able to read just fine.

I rebooted and all of the drives came back fine. But that's a crappy but
standard Windows solution, don't like it.

I've included the Everest SMART report down below on the drive
experiencing the problems.

[ ST3750330AS (3QK05VWL) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 114 99 75934965 OK: Value is normal
03 Spin Up Time 0 94 93 0 OK: Always passing
04 Start/Stop Count 20 100 100 217 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 72 60 16500356 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 92 92 7462 OK: Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 97 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 173 OK: Value is normal
B8 vendor-specific 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BC vendor-specific 0 99 99 655370 OK: Always passing
BD vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BE vendor-specific 45 61 51 706347047 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 39 50 39 OK: Always passing
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 29 18 75934965 OK: Always passing
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

As you can see there's a lot of Raw Read errors, Seek errors, and
hardware ECC recovered. What's the most likely cause of this? Cable?

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote
Yousuf Khan wrote:

Something strange just happened recently, under Windows 7, although I have seen it happen under Windows XP before
too. A hard drive that's internal (i.e. always there, not physically removable), just disappeared from Windows sight.
No longer accessible, HD Sentinel didn't see it either. Rebooted, and everything was fine, it came back. But there
were no warnings in SMART about that drive. Is there something in the Windows logs that I can see about this?

Looks like I've had another recurance of this problem on Windows 7, just over 3 weeks later. The same issues again, I
got an Event ID 15 on the Disk subsystem in device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1. And also just like before, I got a
simultaneous Event ID 11 on the ATAPI subsystem in device \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

Now, I don't think that there is actually anything wrong with the DVD drive, corresponding to event id 11 on
\Device\Ide\IdePort0. There was only one instance of that message, but there were six instances of the event id 15.
Plus there was nothing in the DVD drives at the time to read, so I think the event 11 is just a spurious message by a
confused system. As a test, I also tried reading a disk from that DVD drive later, and it was able to read just fine.

I rebooted and all of the drives came back fine. But that's a crappy but standard Windows solution, don't like it.

Most likely just another example of why new versions of stuff as
complex as an OS are best avoided until they weed the warts out.

I've included the Everest SMART report down below on the drive experiencing the problems.

[ ST3750330AS (3QK05VWL) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 114 99 75934965 OK: Value is normal
03 Spin Up Time 0 94 93 0 OK: Always passing
04 Start/Stop Count 20 100 100 217 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 72 60 16500356 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 92 92 7462 OK: Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 97 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 173 OK: Value is normal
B8 vendor-specific 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BC vendor-specific 0 99 99 655370 OK: Always passing
BD vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BE vendor-specific 45 61 51 706347047 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 39 50 39 OK: Always passing
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 29 18 75934965 OK: Always passing
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

As you can see there's a lot of Raw Read errors, Seek errors, and hardware ECC recovered.

Thats normal for a Seagate. Have a look at them using google and groups.google.

What's the most likely cause of this?

Just the way Seagate does things. With the seeks, the lower bits are just the total number
of seeks, the seek errors are in the higher bits and you dont have any with that drive.

Cable?

Nope, that C7 and you dont have any of those.

Rod Speed wrote:
Yousuf Khan wrote
Yousuf Khan wrote:

Something strange just happened recently, under Windows 7, although I have seen it happen under Windows XP before
too. A hard drive that's internal (i.e. always there, not physically removable), just disappeared from Windows sight.
No longer accessible, HD Sentinel didn't see it either. Rebooted, and everything was fine, it came back. But there
were no warnings in SMART about that drive. Is there something in the Windows logs that I can see about this?

Looks like I've had another recurance of this problem on Windows 7, just over 3 weeks later. The same issues again, I
got an Event ID 15 on the Disk subsystem in device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1. And also just like before, I got a
simultaneous Event ID 11 on the ATAPI subsystem in device \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

Now, I don't think that there is actually anything wrong with the DVD drive, corresponding to event id 11 on
\Device\Ide\IdePort0. There was only one instance of that message, but there were six instances of the event id 15.
Plus there was nothing in the DVD drives at the time to read, so I think the event 11 is just a spurious message by a
confused system. As a test, I also tried reading a disk from that DVD drive later, and it was able to read just fine.

I rebooted and all of the drives came back fine. But that's a crappy but standard Windows solution, don't like it.

Most likely just another example of why new versions of stuff as
complex as an OS are best avoided until they weed the warts out.

There's not even a Microsoft technote about Event id 15 for Windows 7,
but there's plenty of them for XP, Server 2008, etc. All of the
solutions for the other ones lead to patches of some kind.

Is there any way of submitting my event logs to Microsoft and have them
take a look?

I've included the Everest SMART report down below on the drive experiencing the problems.

[ ST3750330AS (3QK05VWL) ]

01 Raw Read Error Rate 6 114 99 75934965 OK: Value is normal
03 Spin Up Time 0 94 93 0 OK: Always passing
04 Start/Stop Count 20 100 100 217 OK: Value is normal
05 Reallocated Sector Count 36 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
07 Seek Error Rate 30 72 60 16500356 OK: Value is normal
09 Power-On Time Count 0 92 92 7462 OK: Always passing
0A Spin Retry Count 97 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
0C Power Cycle Count 20 100 100 173 OK: Value is normal
B8 vendor-specific 99 100 100 0 OK: Value is normal
BB vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BC vendor-specific 0 99 99 655370 OK: Always passing
BD vendor-specific 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
BE vendor-specific 45 61 51 706347047 OK: Value is normal
C2 Temperature 0 39 50 39 OK: Always passing
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 0 29 18 75934965 OK: Always passing
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C6 Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100 100 0 OK: Always passing
C7 Ultra ATA CRC Error Rate 0 200 200 0 OK: Always passing

As you can see there's a lot of Raw Read errors, Seek errors, and hardware ECC recovered.

Thats normal for a Seagate. Have a look at them using google and groups.google.

I'm starting to be inclined to agree with you about Seagates. At the
very least they are hottest drives I have, these days. The ones in my
external cases are all over 50°C. This one is the lone internal one, so
it's being cooled just fine, but it's unhappy for some other reason.

What's the most likely cause of this?

Just the way Seagate does things. With the seeks, the lower bits are just the total number
of seeks, the seek errors are in the higher bits and you dont have any with that drive.

Cable?

Nope, that C7 and you dont have any of those.

Is Ultra ATA CRC error even relevant on SATA drives anymore, since it's
not an Ultra ATA drive. Or is that just a generic term these days?

Yousuf Khan