eSATA HD randomly disconnects/disappears

Anybody?

Ok, I bought two new HDDs and they still have the same problem. When connected via eSATA they randomly disconnect themselves. I have to power off and then on again and then they work fine again for some random period of time.

I get 3 different event messages in the event viewer when this happens.

First I get a, "The device, \Device\Scsi\SI31321, did not respond within the timeout period."

Then I get, "The device 'WD My Bo ok SCSI Disk Device' (SCSI\Disk&Ven_WD_My_Bo&Prod_ok&Rev_01.0\5&193467b2&0&000000) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal."

And at the same time I get, "The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, is not ready for access yet."

Any further ideas on how or if this can be fixed? I'm beginning to think this is purely an ASUS mobo issue or an issue with the Si controller.

Definitely sounds like a hardware issue. Try a PCI eSATA card like the Promise SATA300 TX4302.

I am having the the exact same problem but with a Seagate 1TB Free Agent extreme. I'm running Windows XP Pro - 32 bit, Intel SE7525 GP2 of a on a PCI express card. Different HDD, MB, OS - same problem. I ran SeaTools DX but nothing came up. I don't have a clue as to what is going.

We are having this same problem with WD MyBook 1TB drives and a SIIG eSATA PCI express card. This is happening on two different computers. I called SIIG and they haven't heard of it. I put in a ticket with WD and I got the expected, "make sure the power settings in Windows are not set to power down the drives". I am using XP, by the way. And so what if the O/S powers the drives down? They should kick right back up when I want to access the drive.

This is a big problem and I cannot find out the answer.

I don't think the problem is drive or controller specific.

You are not alone!

Randy

I'm having the same problem running Vista 64 Ultimate on a Shuttle Barebone with nforce 630 chipset and a Hitachi 1TB drive in generic eSATA/USB enclosure. It's maddening and I can't seem to find a solution.

The stupid enclosure I have my drive in unfortunately doesn't support spin down on inactivity via USB so that's not an option since the box is running 24/7 as a home server. Grrrr.

Having the same problem with Vista 64 Home Premium, WD my book 500GB drive when connected to esata - works fine connected to USB.

If I find an answer I'll post it and will be checking back to see if anybody else finds it.

I was able to fix my problem of the external eSATA HD disconnecting. Using Vista HOme Premium SP2 in power options there is an advanced screen which has a menu similar to device manager. under 'hard disk' there is a 'turn off disk after'
option which was set to 20 min. I set it to never and have not had a problem since. It originally looked like the disconnect of the HD was random but I guess it was always 20 min after the last access. This migh not work for all problems listed here but it did fix it for me. good luck LArry

I noticed your post was a little before mine so thought I'd reply

I was able to fix my problem of the external eSATA HD disconnecting. Using Vista HOme Premium SP2 in power options there is an advanced screen which has a menu similar to device manager. under 'hard disk' there is a 'turn off disk after' option which was set to 20 min. I set it to never and have not had a problem since. It originally looked like the disconnect of the HD was random but I guess it was always 20 min after the last access. This migh not work for all problems listed here but it did fix it for me. good luck LArry

I have the exact same issue happening with a new HP Pavilion, WD 1TB Caviar Green and a StarTech SATADOCK22UE external eSATA dock. Windows 7 64-bit recognizes the disk at boot up and performance is great. I primarily use this disk for backups so I kick off a Windows backup and anywhere between a couple hours to just a few minutes, the drive stops responding with the Event ID 15 message "the device, \Device\Harddisk2\DR3, is not ready for access yet". Sometimes a rescan in device manager will wake it up but usually only a reboot will.

The first thing I checked was the Windows "turn off disk after" setting in Power Options. That has been set to Never for a few weeks now but I still get the problem. I've tried setting the BIOS from IDE disk mode to AHCI mode which hasn't helped or hurt. Of course I get better performance in AHCI mode, but the drive still randomly disconnects. I thought it was the StarTech dock, but I can see from this thread and others that it occurs with eSATA conntrollers everywhere.

Anyone continue to have this issue after the suggested Power Option fix mentioned above?

Thanks
Jon

Thought I should mention my story since I found this site looking for an answer. I have a DELL XPS730 Q9450, SLI D*** extension of a computer.. So I bought this MY BOOK 1TB to do my back ups.. Im running WINDOWS 7 64bit and yes via USB it is fine which I found out my self (which took ages!!).

When I use ESATA it just disconnects and is such a pain in the backside to get reconnected again. And when it does finally reconnect, It lasts for
2-10mins. Then the Joy ends.

I thought maybe my format was all wrong (not NTFS or something but it all looks ok.) ESATA is active in BIOS.. ANY Ideas or solutions welcome.. cause I paid for eSata speed not USB 2.0..

I use a number of VanTech external enclosures that have both USB 2.0 and eSATA interfaces. I was experiencing slow performance and random disconnects with one of them. I swapped the enclosure (ie, put the disk that I was having problems with into a different enclosure and tested that combination) and the problem went away.

So I've assumed the problem is with the circuitry associated with the eSATA port in the enclosure. I've put duct tape over that port so that I won't be tempted into using it again...

the only time i have seen this is
1. faulty cables
2. drives over heating
3. seagate - i believe it was the 1.5 drive had a weird firmware issue - which they fixed that caused drive to act up... (i happen to be a big seagate fan)
Moti Mitteldorf - Good Luck!

Same problem here with a HP M9450F... My e-sata drive disconnect after 1 minute. Also the transfer speed is slow

e-sata 2or3Mb/s
USB2 700Kb/s
FireWire 300Kb/s

Why it is so slow ? I can't find any solutions for months...

My external drive is ok, i've plug to another computer with WinXP and the speed was about 35Mb/s

The Cable is okay.
The HD too.

Exact same problem: WD My Book 1TB with Win7 64bit on an AMD 780G board. Disconnects after a while on eSata. Fine on Firewire and USB (but slower). I'm still looking for a solution.

Well, I kinda have the same problem but weirder. I just can't get through!
I got a LaCie d2 Quandra 1TB external HD, with USB, Firewire and eSATA interfaces. When I use USB, it's all fine. But with eSATA, my VAIO can detect it, and I have no problem reading any kind of files on it. The external HD won't be disconnected until I try to copy files from VAIO to LaCie or the other way around, it would start the copying process and I can feel the SPEED! Unfortunately, after just a couple of seconds of joy, the external HD disconnnects, EVERYTIME!
I contacted LaCie, they told me to try the HD on other computers, I did, it turned out there's no problem on my friend's DELL which also has eSATA port.
Then I contacted SONY, online, emails, telephones, I did everything they told me to, nothing's got better. I'm LOST! If someone would help me out on this, I'd be willing to pay for it...cos eSATA definitely is way faster than USB.
Now it's not accessible for me to try another eSATA external HD on my VAIO, I dont even know which one is wrong here, VAIO or LaCie  

I'm having the same problem as wslx. I have the exact same external but I'm using a Toshiba Satellite A505-S6960. The HD stays connected until I try to transfer to or from it, disconnects, and then reconnects. I contacted LaCie and they suggested I look for BIOS updates and sent me new esata cable in case it was the cable. I haven't received it yet, but I'm doubting it is the source of the problem now that I see other people are having the same problem. Have you figured anything out, wslx?

I am having the exact same problem. I've got a Western Digital 750GB green caviar hooked up to an eSATA port and running Windows 7 64. Random disconnects. Only solution is to reboot. What's the common thread here? Is it Windows 7 64?

Have you found a solution to your problem yet? I have the same LaCie Quadra. I am connecting it to my HP Pavillion Dv7 (Windows 7, 64 bit) via e-Sata. It worked for a short while (couple of weeks) then started to disconnect. I sent it back to LaCie. They did some firmware updates and replace a board on it. It worked for a few video editing projects. Today I was trying to copy about 300 jpegs off a DVD and it kept disappearing. I copied the files to my internal hard drive then tried to copy them to my external LaCie with the same results (worked for about 1 minute then disconnect). I also tried to use the firewire port with the same annoying disconnect problems. Here is what I am going to try now:
1. copy my project and files onto my WD e-sata drive and see if it works with the laptop
2. take the LaCie to my desktop (HP XW workstation running Windows XP) and see if it has any problems over there.

Any other ideas for me? The drive is less than 6 months old.

Regards,

Lisa

I found a solution for WD MyBook disconnecting from the eSATA port. The eSATA port in my computer is a JMicron type on a Gigabyte board.
When I used the stock JMicron drivers from JMicron website I found the drive would always disconnect after a period of time even if I had made adjustments in the Windows Control Panel Power Management settings.
I then decided to remove this JMicron driver and install the specific Gigabyte driver for the JMicron controller. The drive no longer disconnects!

In Device manager > Storage Controllers, The Jmicron controller will now be named as the Gigabyte GBB36X Controller.

Therefore, if you have a Gigabyte board then I strongly recommend you use the Gigabyte specific driver which is normally included on the CD that came with your motherboard.

If you have another brand of motherboard you should investigate whether the company has their own driver for the JMicron controller and if they do use that one.

Good luck and Happy Easter!

I have the same problem; but the other way around. I have an eSata dock that works fine. I've transfered multiple Terabites over it without issues. I got a few USB2/eSata enclosures to give my father a few of my older 1TB HDDs and was using them to do some transfer-shuffles of my data around before I gave him the blank drives. Using 1TB WD Green Drivea and ByTecc HD-35 enclosures, both of them drop out and I get the "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk5\DR10 during a paging operation." (and DR# gets one higher each time it happens)...

My other way around; I have these working on USB, not eSata... My eSata drive is peachy. Normally I wouldn't care that much but my father is going to only have USB so... These have to be reliable.

Running Win7 64

Junk enclosures? Or windows bug? I'm going to try them in one of my other computers soon so perhaps I'll get a few answers that way.

I had the same problem. I have the gigabyte ga-p55a-ud7 with built in external esata ports. My wd drives worked fine with usb2 but with the esata they disappear while transferring data after between 5-30 seconds. The engineer tech at Western Digital told me that there are NO compatible esata connectors out there by wd that are compatible with 64-bit. He forwarded me to WD's usb 3 new hard drives. It looks like it's usb 2 or nothing for these "older" externals.

Mine drops out after an hour or so. I changed the power settings to never turn off. I also updated my JMicron drivers as suggested. Still drops out.

WD My Book Home 1TB on Windows 7 32-bit.

P::: - If you still got the problem with the eSATA dropping out and the VAIO, send me note to my website I had the same problem with the eSATA drive disconnecting frequently and I just fixed it after 3 days.
In my case I have a LaCie d2 Quadra (1TB) running on a Toshiba A500 laptop, and i experienced all the same problems as you and pretty much everyone else on this thread.

Drop me a line to my e-mail tcs@totalcomputersolutions.org if you still have the problem or visit me on www.totalcomputersolutions.org and send me an email there.
   

I have a similar problem Win7 64-bit and may have found the solution. On my system I have an HP xb4 Notebook Media Docking Station connected to an HP Pavillion dv7-3085dx. Throughout the day, all USB devices connected to the docking station would disconnect/reconnect. I had thought it may be one of the USB devices causing the problem, disconnected all of them -issue persisted. I thought the problem was with the docking station, hp replaced it - same problem persisted.

I then read on some other forums that the issue was prevalent with the NVIDIA GeForce Video card (which my laptop has the GT 230M model). So, last night I updated the video driver to the most recent version (July 2010). So far today, no disconnects which normally would have had at least 5-10 random disconnects by now.

Is it fixed, not 100% sure but so far seems to be working well.

Quick update. No issues after updating the NVIDIA GeForce Video drivers. Day #2!

I have a quad processor on an Asus board with 8GB ram. about 10 TB of drives. Ihave always been the biggest fan of the Western Digital drives.... UNTIL I started using Windows 7. I have had nothing but problems with moving files around, drives constantly falling offline, a few other annoying things. I blamed Microsoft for a long time but getting pretty sure its the interactions of the WD drives and Windows 7. I just bought the 3TB Seagate drive and it works smooth and no issues. Never hangs or falls offline. My WD's are going in the closet with backups and gonna start buying the Seagate 3TB's. It annoys the crap out of me to try and move a 1TB file and it takes hours. It goes for a little while then hangs for 10-15 min then goes a little more. The Seagate goes straight thru with no hangs.
BTW I tried the WD drives on firewire, USB and eSATA and the same issue. I buy the multi interface drives typically.

Being Fair, Windows 7 has file management issue for sure.

I have had the same with WD drives.
3x 500GB WD MyBooks. 2 of them attached to a MacMini and one attached to an Ubuntu box.
All the drives do the same thing .. They simply "fall offline" after some time. This is a major hassel with my remote linux box as one needs to power down and back up the drive before trying to mount it again.
No matter how I connect them (Firewire, Esata OR USB) this still happens.

I have 2 Seagate units and a Lacie and none ever cause this issue.

Of course it's now out of warrantee (about the time it take before one realises the severity / that it's not your own fault)

If you notice. All of the large drives are sold as backups. The total info they give with them is they are for backups and are not made to run all the time. Frankly I've never figured out what none of th large drives are for regular use. I think its the firmware that causes the problems because its alway wanting to shut off for power save. It's on purpose.... I read some forums saying that this same thing was in Vista and they carried the bad issue over so Windows 7 doesn't work properly with WD drive (and some others) All of mine are WD except for one 3TB which is Seagate. It has no problems. All my WD's do. I have 500GB internal, 5-1TB's external, 1 2TB WD, 1-Seagate 3TB. Should be a rockin' system but the drive issues pretty much kill the benefits of super power motherboard and memory and graphics. BTW I had an Nvidia graphics card and everyone was saying that it may be the issue. So I took it out and bout a high powered ATI. No difference in the drive issue. So get that out of your heads. I love WD but I'm sick of this issue and no one fessing up to the issue. Microsoft ignores it saying there and no complaints when I see 1000's of forum entries talking about it. WD thinks they don't stink so they don't do anything. ASUS tries to work on it.

I've been wrestling with the problem of disappearing/re-appearing back up internal hard drive for some time now. When I first noticed the problem I was running XP sp3 and using a sata 400gb WD. I tried changing cables,slots, drive letters, gave the drive its own solitary power cable,checked disk for errors and eventually returned the drive to WD because I thought the HD must had something faulty. WD was nice enough to send me a 500gb drive in return, during the time it was being shipped I upgraded to Win7 x64 from a clean install and got 4 more gig of Ram.
Things seemed OK for awhile, but once again the drive disappeared sometimes hanging up Windows so I had to soft boot. Sometimes causing safe mode to hang up while starting,same with repair utility, only to have my computer mysteriously start up the next time like nothing had ever happened.
Ive eliminated most of the potential culprits, tried the never power down option to no avail, and Im looking into perhaps a problem with my motherboard - evga n-force 780i- which I hope isnt causing the problem. Im going to try changing to another sata port and see if there's an improvement, or Perhaps go with 1 large HD in partitions instead as a possible workaround.
Right now Im trying to keep all of my programs from accessing the drive, lest it pulls a vanishing act in the middle of it running and hang up my whole system ( again).

I hope somebody can pinpoint this problem, and maybe give us a solution.

Good to know that I am not alone. This problem of disappearing hard drives really drives me nuts.
Now it actually looks like it's a WD problem.

My main drive on a new Win7 machine is a 1TB Hitachi drive. No problems.
The second and third drives (all internal) are WD 500G and 1TB drives. Almost daily they drop off the system, as described by others above.
The only way for Win7 to see them again is to reboot the system. I guess I can't go back to WD drives because what good are they when they just disappear from the system in the middle of a larger ftp download?  

Thanks to this forum I now know how to deal with the situation... Thanks to everybody who contributed here.

I came across an interesting comment on another forum. One user with this problem recommended turning off the Home Group in Win7. That solved his problem of disconnecting hard drives.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7hardware/thread/d415d000-75ee-4b61-8bbf-99f193ebc15d

I tried it yesterday and so far my drives have been stable (almost 24 hours now). Too early to tell if this is indeed a solution to the mysterious problem (what does the Home Group have to do with the hard drives in a system?).
I will follow up in a few days.

UPDATE:
Back to square one: the second drive (WD drive) disconnected again...

I can't give you definite proof, but I am pretty sure that WD's external ESATA drive does not respect any "Power Management" you set no matter what OS you are using. I had numerous WD external drives over the years and got burnt almost every time. I've done researches before and I've seen complaints from all kinds of users, from OS X to XP, to Vista, to Win 7, 32 bit or 64 bit. All of them complaining that their WD drives would automatically disconnect itself.

I am currently using a Seagate BlackArmor 1TB and a WD 1TB, both are ESATA, hooking up to the same PCI-E ESATA card. The Seagate has no problem at all, but the WD keeps giving me that disconnection problems. I've tried switching the ports, but same problems happened. I've tried only hooking up one drive at a times, again, it's the WD that gave me the problems.

So, I wrote a small Windows Service to keep writing a text file to the WD drive every couple minutes. Problem solved. Yup, that's all it takes to fix the problem. The driver itself has no physical problems at all -- it's just that somehow its interface insists on disconnecting the drive from the computer even though the OS explicitly instructs not to do so.

SNAP ! same problem after a time of between 10 mins and 10 hours the drive seems to go to sleep and then wont reconect, have to cycle the esata external power switch to get it to reconect to my computer.

but i have fixed it now.... well so far so good  

i have installed a program that write a smal data file to the drive at a user set time interval.

the program is free its called xsleep and like i say so far so good, no disconection.
i have set mine at every 9 mins to write the file to the esata drive.  


you can download it here : http://xsleep.codeplex.com/

not sure what effect it will have long term on the drive but its stopped me pulling my hair out so im happy.  



let me know how you get on. oh running windows 7 64bit, esata das200 external drive with 2x 1 tb WD green drives installed.

ok been playing at 9 mins it still disconects at 8 mins it dont  

Well, since my program does the similar thing, may be my experience can give you some ideas ... unfortunately, it doesn't look good. All my WD drives began to have problems after about 2 years. They all had bad sectors that chkdsk couldn't fix. I also ran HDD Regenerator, but that didn't help neither. May be writing a small files constantly might reduce the lifespan of the drive.

Disable the cache of the device in Device Manager!

UPDATE:

Sorry guys I havent visited here for a LONG time since I've already given up on its eSATA feature.
About a month ago, my Lacie had some problem (I tried to change the partitions but failed, could not even reformat it).
It's still under warranty so I contacted Lacie however they didnt solve my problem, then they told me to send it back (shipping cost was on me, and this kinda sucks). But the repair is free and they sent me back with no cost.

And the eSATA works! and it's great! So from my perspective, its problem was, I purchased a defective drive (Sorry it might not help you guys in your specific cases.) Just let you guys know my situation here.
BTW I bought a iomega eSATA/USB drive before, it works fine. and I;m not gonna blame lacie even though at first I got a defective drive, eventualy problem solved and I;m happy with the result now.

one more BTW, USB 3.0 is way faster than eSATA, if you have a change, go get that one  

An issue that might be related is discussed regularly over at the TiVo Community forums on a thread about upgrading the hard drive. WD drives are by far the most used drives for upgrading TiVos, but they had an issue for a year or so that involved the time-out duration of WD's "Intellipark" feature. For a time up to about 6-8 months ago, WD shipped certain drives with the Intellipark time-out shorter than would work with a TiVo, and it resulted in hangs when soft-booting.

I don't know if some of the issues mentioned here are related or not, but there's a Boot CD available that uses a program called wdidle3.exe (WD Idle) to increase the timeout duration for IntelliPark or completely disable it.

The instructions provided for TiVo upgraders is in Section V, #14 of the following post:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?p=5...

Perhaps this will help some here.

I had same problem with a LaCie hard disk Quadra and Dell Latitude on Windows 7 with esata in the docking station. The USB works fine but using the esata interface it would stay connected, but when trying to write to the drive would work for a few seconds then disconnect. I then used Control Panel > Device Manager > properties > Policies, and unchecked the "Enable write caching on the device". After this the drive worked fine with esata. Hope this snippet helps others.

I had the same problem with LaCie d2Next-Quadra 1TB with eSATA using Windows 7 x64 Enterprise on Dell Precision M6500. Disabled write cache as you described and now everything works as expected.

I'm copying 98.9GB (lrage VHD and VDI files) from the internal 256GB SSD at a speed of 61MB/second. Initially speed was above 100MB/second, but dropped quickly to this level.

Thanks for helping out :-)

I have the following setup:

LaCie Hard Disk Quadra, 1TB, Multiple Interface eSATA 3Gb/s | FireWire 800 & 400 | USB 2.0
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Lenovo Thinkpad T420

When trying to run Windows backup via the eSATA connection, the drive kept disconnecting shortly into starting the backup process. I switched to USB and it worked without issues. I haven't tested the FireWire since I don't have the right type on my computer.

I actually also had trouble when trying to do the initial disc format on the LaCie, since I had it connected via eSATA. When I switched to USB it seemed to format just fine (but took so long I had to let it run overnight). I guess this must have been the same disconnect issue as when trying to save a backup via eSATA.

I tried the above fix of disabling write caching for the device, and it seemed to work. I just successfully completed a Windows backup with the eSATA connection without it randomly disconnecting! I was beginning to think I had either a faulty LaCie or the eSATA port on my new laptop wasn't working. Thanks for posting this fix!

Everyone's making this way to complicated. Here's the real problem, and an easy fix with only one drawback. The drive won't be hot-swappable.

If it's not an outright drive failure, it's because your eSATA controller is crap. The eSATA controller is a different I/O chip than the one that controls the internal hard drive. Mine's a jMicron something er other and the onboard SATA controller is nVidia. I found an easy fix for this problem if you don't need the drive to be hot-swappable -- in other words, you'd have to plug the drive in before you boot up everytime, or just leave the drive plugged in. Here's what I did, which fixed the problem:

Get a cheap external eSATA connector from an online retailer. They're like 5 bucks. One end connects to an open motherboard SATA port the other takes a pci slot. Now you'll have the internal hard drive controller running your external drive as if it's an internal drive like your C: drive. No more disconnects. However remember you can't unplug it or turn it off during use. Doing so on my comp causes blue screens.

I think this is just related to your motherboard. I have an Esata bracket in my computer. It has two esata ports and the cables connect to a regular internal sata port on my motherboard. I use a Vantech NexStar3 enclosure on one esata port and a thermaltake BlacX esata dock on the other. Both are hot swappable and I've had no problems with either.

Now, back to the issue. I've had my NexStar3 for almost 2 years and never had a problem. Recently it has started dropping out about once a week with no indication why in the event viewer. I think it's just on it's way out and I'll probably need to replace it soon.

Oh, almost forgot to mention I'm on Win7 x64 and one of the first things I did after installing the OS was to go into the power settings and make sure it never spins down the drives.

What I found is that for esata 2.5 drive running from usb power is if the drive is spind down and the usb port is also set to power saving by turning off, you will have problem getting the drive to work again.

I have essentailly the same setup, except with a new Dell Precision Workstation M6600. Dell's latest eport replicator only offers the eSata for high speed, and I use my LaCie for image backup. As soon as the copy process started, the drive would disconnect. Disabling the write caching worked perfectly. Thank you!

I have read all the comments and it seems that for some the problem is software based whether it's power management settings or Windows 7.

Lenovo laptops don't seem to have this issue with eSATA. They are better designed than some.

I believe the reason is that some laptop manufacturers have multiple ports but they are actually sharing. It's a USB & eSATA hub if you want.

The sharing causes rapid connections and disconnections which is more or less fine with USB (not great when typing fast) but not with eSATA.

Lenovo offers "always on" USB ports on their laptops for hardware than requires uninterrupted connections. Their eSATA ports work without problems too.

Now there is USB 3.0 but I still think eSATA is better because although USB 3 alllows for higher read speed, the difference is not noticeable in most cases whereas their write speed is significantly slower than eSATA.

I have the disconnect problem with my eSATA drives (Samsung). Vista 64. Disabling write cache slows me down to USB 2 speeds and so is not a solution for me.

A little later, I have my fingers crossed as a 129gb copy just completed on a write-cache enabled eSATA... the tweak may have been control panel>power options>change advanced power settings>hard disk settings>turn off>longer than need be to complete your operations. I tried "never" and that worked but I am going to put 8 hours or so because I think that will do the trick for me and allow the little workhorses to get some sleep, most of the time, actually.