Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Hi All, I`ve got an intermittant problem with a Win 7 Ultimate x86 system which occasionly loses the D Drive! C:/ is a 500 gb drive and D:/ is a spinpoint 1tb drive.
The system is a Gigabyte GA-880GM-UD2H Board, AMB Phenom II X4 955 Black edition cpu with 4 gb of OCZ Gold DDR3 PC3 10666 c9 Ram.
All drivers are up to date and the system was built by myself 6 or 7 months ago. Any Ideas because i`m stumped. If my client turns the PC off, Leaves it for a few minutes and then back on, D:/ re-appears. The power supply is a BE QUIET 520 watt and is only 3 months old, my Antec PSU tester says its ok. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks.:)

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Broken drive? Check the drive's health stats (SMART)

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

The drive is fine mate.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Checked the power / data cable??

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Both cables replaced thanks guys for your answers so far. ;)

I did wonder if the Mobo SATA controller could be playing up, is that possible?

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

It's possible, but very very rare. Swap the ports over?

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Last time this happened to me it was the drive. Exaclty the same behaviour, would suddenly die, followed by coming back to life after a power cycle, pause and power back on again.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Hmm Strange. Do samsung do drive diagnostic tools for their Drives? Sorry, i`ll google that.;)

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

When my Western Digital started doing this, the WD drive diagnostics reported the drive as ok. I have since verified the drive is faulty via an external drop in caddy in which it exhibits the same behaviour.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

So you say "the drive is fine mate" but you haven't done any diagnostics to check it? :rolleyes:

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

I did a checkdisk scan on it and ran spinrite on it mate.:dozey::)

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Neither of which tell you anything particularly useful, hence why I asked you to check the SMART stats themselves, mate.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Well I had a similar issue and still do with my current Gigabyte EX 58 Extreme Motherboard.

It will loose all the drives except for the C: Drive, and I tested the drives in another machine and on another 2 boards and they worked fine.

I know the Sata Chipset on the board is faulty but to be honest at the moment I cannot send it off because it only, does it if the cpu is overclocked but when it's at stock speed it run's fine at the moment but the second it does it at stock speed the board is off to Gigabyte.

Try swapping the port's etc because most Gigabyte board's have 2 different sata controllers on them, which 1 of them may have gone faulty unless it's only the Intel Gigabyte boards have 2 and the AMD don't.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

Ive got the same board as your client and there are some wierd issues with the sata controller which could cause errors. Mine only manifested as incorrect windows performance index of 7.3 on a standard sata 2 drive lol. However this could easily lead to other problems.
Sorted mine with a driver update and upgrading to sp1.

Also as mentioned above this board should have six internal sata ports split accross two controllers. Make sure both drives are on the primary controller (4 ports). this one performs faster and possibly more stable in my experience. Although if it is on the primary already and if changing sockets doesnt help switching to the secondary could be worth a try.

Re: Windows 7 losing D:/ Drive.
 

:td:Ive tried everything tonight and the machine just shut down and will not reboot.! I`ve unplugged all of the drives including the dvd rewriters and Graphics card and it still won`t reboot. Another item back to ARIA for Gods sake!:mad::mad: It`s a new power supply with the recommended rating and Memtest 4.20 still shows errors even at the correct voltage. I will never ever use ARIA again. I`m about £ 20 out of pocket from the returns so far and now i`ve got to send the Mobo back. Next time i think it`ll be Scan for me or someone else. ARIA suck Moose Balls big time.:td: