Harlequin565
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- Ian
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I know it's a long shot but my Google-fu is drawing a blank.
I have 4 hard drives in my PC. A 250Gb SSD for OS & Apps, a 40Gb SSD for VMs, and 2 500Gb standard drives for User data (Pics & music mostly). I seem to be constantly getting problems with the drives just disappearing off My Computer. Going into Device Manager and re-scanning will populate them again, but whilst the drive is offline, I can't access anything on the drive (can't use programs if C: goes down, can't see my pics if E: goes down). Occasionally the DVD drive also disappears. Interestingly (or oddly), if C goes down (which has the OS) I can still access Control Panel to bring up Device Manager.
First task was to check & reseat all the cables to the drives & motherboard. No improvement.
Then I backed everything up & did a clean re-install of Windows (7). The problem continued and my 2 external USB backup drives now also won't show up. Downloading drivers for motherboard & external drives does nothing.
I don't get any errors & there's nothing I can understand in Event Manager or in the SMART data from the disks themselves that makes me think there's a problem. Google suggests it's a SATA cable issue or a physical hard drive issue but with this happening on all my drives I doubt that. All I'm left with that's common to all drives is either the power supply or the motherboard. However both are decent, branded items. Both are, however, 4 years old.
Has anyone had anything like this before? Can anyone offer an educated guess as to the nature of the problem, or ways to identify it further?
Ian.
I have 4 hard drives in my PC. A 250Gb SSD for OS & Apps, a 40Gb SSD for VMs, and 2 500Gb standard drives for User data (Pics & music mostly). I seem to be constantly getting problems with the drives just disappearing off My Computer. Going into Device Manager and re-scanning will populate them again, but whilst the drive is offline, I can't access anything on the drive (can't use programs if C: goes down, can't see my pics if E: goes down). Occasionally the DVD drive also disappears. Interestingly (or oddly), if C goes down (which has the OS) I can still access Control Panel to bring up Device Manager.
First task was to check & reseat all the cables to the drives & motherboard. No improvement.
Then I backed everything up & did a clean re-install of Windows (7). The problem continued and my 2 external USB backup drives now also won't show up. Downloading drivers for motherboard & external drives does nothing.
I don't get any errors & there's nothing I can understand in Event Manager or in the SMART data from the disks themselves that makes me think there's a problem. Google suggests it's a SATA cable issue or a physical hard drive issue but with this happening on all my drives I doubt that. All I'm left with that's common to all drives is either the power supply or the motherboard. However both are decent, branded items. Both are, however, 4 years old.
Has anyone had anything like this before? Can anyone offer an educated guess as to the nature of the problem, or ways to identify it further?
Ian.
