WD Drive disappears after sleep (new build)

[PSUSkier]

I have a Western Digital WD15EADS-00P8B0 drive that suddenly will not come out of sleep with the rest of the system. I have two of these in the system that I use for bulk storage and one of them always comes back reliably but the other one does not. This all started after I put together a new Ivy Bridge system coming from a Core 2 Quad (it worked reliably under that system). OS is the same, but with a fresh install. I did install a SSD with this build and had to configure the SATA controller for AHCI, but I wouldn't think that would mater. When operational, the drive operates just fine.

So far, I've tried switching SATA cables, SATA ports, moving it to a different power supply bus all with no results. I also enabled hot swapping, which did nothing by itself, but the drive will come back if I disconnect and reconnect the SATA cable after waking the system up. I'm not quite sure where to go from here, so any recommendations would be appreciated. Here is my system configuration:

Intel 3570k
MSI Z77A-GD65
Primary Drive: Sandisk Extreme 120GB (connected to a 6gbps SATA port)
Ancillary drives: Western Digital WD15EADS-00P8B0 X2 (connected to the 3gbps SATA ports)
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

 

[djscribbles]

You can change the power management settings so that the disk doesn't get powered down during inactivity.
(Can't give detailed instructions because my work PC is still XP)

If you can get to power management (try looking around the screen saver customization), there is an advanced settings button, click that, then look for the hard drive power down option; it's usually set to 10-20 minutes by default, just turn it down to 0 (disabled). I would expect that to prevent the drive from disappearing at the cost of a little electricity.

 

[foscooter]

Why are you putting a PC to sleep when you have a SSD?

The better option is to power the PC down, as boot up will be fast enough anyways.

There are some tips & tricks for SSD users:

The SSD Review - SSD Optimization Guide

OCZ Blog - SSD Tips & Tweaks (I know, not an OCZ SSD, but works the same)

Somewhere is there is the power settings for SSD (& HDD).

 

[djscribbles]

Why are you putting a PC to sleep when you have a SSD?

The better option is to power the PC down, as boot up will be fast enough anyways.

There are some tips & tricks for SSD users:

The SSD Review - SSD Optimization Guide

OCZ Blog - SSD Tips & Tweaks (I know, not an OCZ SSD, but works the same)

Somewhere is there is the power settings for SSD (& HDD).

#16 from The SSD Review - SSD Optimization Guide describes exactly what I was recommending

But I recommend checking out all the steps in the guide foscooter recommended; Definately do items 1 through 7 (six can be skipped if you want, but I prefer to do it).

I didn't find this guide till a year or so after I got my SSD, it basically free'd up about 10 gigs or more on my 60gig drive.

 

[foscooter]

Yeah, and the guide was written in 2010.

 

[PSUSkier]

Why are you putting a PC to sleep when you have a SSD?

The better option is to power the PC down, as boot up will be fast enough anyways.

There are some tips & tricks for SSD users:

The SSD Review - SSD Optimization Guide

OCZ Blog - SSD Tips & Tweaks (I know, not an OCZ SSD, but works the same)

Somewhere is there is the power settings for SSD (& HDD).

So I've actually done about all of those tweaks for my SSD, but thanks for the links. The reason I like to have this thing go to sleep is it hosts Sick Beard and all the associated media is shared among my HTPC and what not. So it's easy enough for me to power it up via wake on LAN, but I don't necessarily want to go upstairs and shut it down every time I decide to stream some media.

I looked into some ways to shutdown the PC based on idle timers in Task Scheduler, but I'm limited to only one hour of operational time which doesn't give me enough time for most movies and whatnot (the nice thing about sleep is it keeps track of who is connected and drawing files from the machine). If anyone has any ideas of how to mimic these behaviors, that'd be great as well.

 

[foscooter]

Ok, very valid reason.

I've just always had problems with sleep and SSD's. But not your case.

 

[PSUSkier]

So it looks like the problem is getting worse. It is disappearing at random now so it is looking like the controller is failing. Odd though that just happened to manifest when I rebuilt the machine. Thanks for the comments everyone.

 

[djscribbles]

Apologies if you already know this; but ESD (electro-static discharge) could have been the reason it failed during the build. When you work inside the PC either use a static grounding strap, or be very careful to work with 1 hand or your wrists touching a metallic portion of the case, especially after moving around.

Anyhow, pretty obvious that you'll need to get as much of your critical data as you can off the drive as quick as you can.


Edit:

Actually, maybe worth replacing the SATA cable on the failing drive, and plugging it into a different SATA port (if you wanna go all out, using a different power connector). A loose or damaged cable could be an easy fix.