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

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 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 found the message I was looking for in the Windows event
log. It looks like I was experiencing simultaneous problems with a SATA
hard disk and an IDE DVD drive (although that's weird since there was
nothing inside the DVD drive at the time). I saw the following messages:

Disk Error message:

Log Name: System
Source: Disk
Date: 21/03/2010 7:31:57 AM
Event ID: 15
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: desktop-yjk_w7
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, is not ready for access yet.


ATAPI Error message:

Log Name: System
Source: atapi
Date: 21/03/2010 7:31:57 AM
Event ID: 11
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: desktop-yjk_w7
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

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.

You do sometimes see memory leaks in XP produce that result.

Normally you have to be quite a while between reboots to see that,
or be running something that produces memory leaks very badly.

But there were no warnings in SMART about that drive.

Because it was nothing to do with the drive, just the OS.

Is there something in the Windows logs that I can see about this?

Yes, you should be able to see evidence of memory leaks in
there when the lack of free memory becomes quite severe.

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 found the message I was looking for in the Windows event log. It looks like I was experiencing
simultaneous problems with a SATA hard disk and an IDE DVD drive (although that's weird since there was nothing inside
the DVD drive at the time). I saw the following messages:

Disk Error message:

Log Name: System
Source: Disk
Date: 21/03/2010 7:31:57 AM
Event ID: 15
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: desktop-yjk_w7
Description:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, is not ready for access yet.

ATAPI Error message:

Log Name: System
Source: atapi
Date: 21/03/2010 7:31:57 AM
Event ID: 11
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: desktop-yjk_w7
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.

It may have been a glitch with your IDE/SATA converter.

Rod Speed wrote:
You do sometimes see memory leaks in XP produce that result.

Normally you have to be quite a while between reboots to see that,
or be running something that produces memory leaks very badly.

Well, I do tend to run this system like a server. It's usually up for
weeks at a time, 24 hours/day. The main app that runs on it during this
time is a bittorrent client.

But there were no warnings in SMART about that drive.

Because it was nothing to do with the drive, just the OS.

I'd have thought at least some kind of CRC error increment or something.


Yousuf Khan

Rod Speed wrote:
It may have been a glitch with your IDE/SATA converter.


Not possible, none of these drives has anything to do with the IDE/SATA
converters. The drive that disappeared briefly was a native SATA drive
connected via SATA, and the optical drives are all IDE running through
IDE. In fact, the converted IDE/SATA drives are running beautifully, no
problems whatsoever.

This is why it was so strange, the optical drives are all IDE now, and
the hard drives are all running through SATA now. There should be no
connection between the optical drives and the hard drives -- totally
separate controllers.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan wrote
Rod Speed wrote

You do sometimes see memory leaks in XP produce that result.

Normally you have to be quite a while between reboots to see that,
or be running something that produces memory leaks very badly.

Well, I do tend to run this system like a server. It's usually up for
weeks at a time, 24 hours/day. The main app that runs on it during
this time is a bittorrent client.

Thats certainly the situation where you see memory leaks with XP.

I run like that myself and eventually see some problem, usually that
I cant have as much stuff open at once as I can just after a reboot.

The most recent reboot was because the menus in OE went missing.

But there were no warnings in SMART about that drive.

Because it was nothing to do with the drive, just the OS.

I'd have thought at least some kind of CRC error increment or something.

That doesnt see a drive go missing, just sees DMA turned off and PIO used instead.

Yousuf Khan wrote:
Rod Speed wrote:
You do sometimes see memory leaks in XP produce that result.

Normally you have to be quite a while between reboots to see that,
or be running something that produces memory leaks very badly.

Well, I do tend to run this system like a server. It's usually up for
weeks at a time, 24 hours/day. The main app that runs on it during this
time is a bittorrent client.

But there were no warnings in SMART about that drive.

Because it was nothing to do with the drive, just the OS.

I'd have thought at least some kind of CRC error increment or something.

If the error was entierly with the controller, the drive may
never have seen any problem.

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

Arno wrote:
If the error was entierly with the controller, the drive may
never have seen any problem.


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. It was just something transient, because I just
did a warm reboot (i.e. no power-off) and it fixed it.

This system is now running Win7 rather than XP, so it might be a driver
issue too.

Yousuf Khan

lid wrote:
Yousuf Khan kenjka:
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?

Try to replace your cables... You said that you have seen this behaviour on
XP and now on Win7... Often the most stupid thing is giving you the
headaches and produces those 'ghosty' behaviour nobody can understand...

In the case of the IDE cables, that had already been tried before, and
it made no difference. Haven't really tried it with the SATA cables, but
none of these SATA cables are from the same batch, they were all
independently obtained as drives were added.

Would the number of drives in the system be a problem here? I got 5
internal hard drives (all SATA), 3 external hard drives (1 eSATA, 2
USB), plus 2 optical drives (all IDE). I got a 650W PSU for it.

Yousuf Khan