At what seems to be at random intervals my secondary drive in my workstation just disappears. The OS is not installed on this drive (it's my "E:" drive). I'm not using RAID.
- The PC is a Dell Precision T3500 running Windows 2008 R2.
- It contains a Intel Matrix Storage Controller on the motherboard (v8.5.2.1002). I'm running the windows software for that controller v8.9 (which I guess contains windows drivers - which is why I mention it).
- The failing drive is a Western Digital WD4000AAJS-0 which is a 400 GB 7200 RPM drive SATA (firmware 12.01C01)
I notice system event log entries that seem to correlate to the times the drive goes away: Source isStor, Event ID 9, Description: The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.
This drive was working fine for more than a year in another PC and was moved to this machine for about 3 months. However, this problem started only a week ago.
Googling for this problem seems to point at the intel matrix controller. Yet none of the workarounds I've found help. (renaming a registry key, updating the matrix software, switching sata ports)
Any ideas?
Update The drive started to not just disappear but stay visible and deny access to some files on the drive. I ultimately copied what I could to the working main drive and disconnected it. This workstation's primary drive is too small for the work I do so I'll hook up other drive at some point and post the results here. (Why add 12GB of ram for hosting virtual machines but choose 250GB drives so i have no room for VHDs??)
Also I tracked down to the event log that the problem started the same day I installed Remote Desktop Services role (aka terminal services) in attempt to get Aero glass working over remote desktops to this PC (don't ask). I ended up removing that role since it didn't help. I wonder if some type of power management setting was flipped on/off during the add or remove of that server role?
Update 2 After a few years of running this machine with only one drive (the one dell ships) after never really resolving this issue I ended up installing a second drive again. This drive, a 2012 WD Caviar "black" (WD1002FAEX), seems to be running fine with none of these issues. I assume this issues was caused by bugs in the SATA power management of older drives with this controller/windows 2008.