Question HDD disappears after a period of inactivity, reappears after power or sleep/hibernate cycle ?

[mj-88]

Hello all,

I'm having an issue with my newly bought WD BLACK 10TB internal 3.5" HDD Model WD101FZBX, it replaced an older WD BLACK 4TB from 2014.

SCENARIO:

• Booting up the PC is normal, HDD shows up in BIOS & is usable in Windows per the usual, set to GPT & partitioned to NTFS, SMART results are good, Crystal Disk Info matches the specs & HDsentinel shows it's life as brand new with a thousand days of constant usage left to it's name.
• I started to migrate data over till I reached 50% & was done at that. As the HDD was left for a period of inactivity (went to sleep/turned off, NOT the PC), it disappeared including from Disk Management.
• PSU RAIL in use powers the HDD in question (swapped the old one out) + a frontal type C USB & card reader hub (both unused) with an m.2 internal expansion (Unchanged) + 2.5" 1TB SATA SSD (Unchanged)

TROUBLESHOOTING & CONCLUSION:
As I troubleshoot the issue & experimented with a few things I came out with a few workarounds & a possible cause::

• This problem is loosely related to the power plans where the HDD would turn off/sleep after a period of inactivity depending on the duration you assign, in this setting the HDD is not supposed to disconnect as it wakes/ramps up on demand, drive is still visible throughout, increasing this timer or setting it to "never" avoids the issue I'm having with this drive (PC-HDD power plan workaround) but beats the purpose of a resting HDD when not in use & noise reduction associated with it.
• Restarting the System remedies this issue until it is left inactive again, also going through a sleep/hibernation cycle brings back the device including in Disk Management which was odd.
• Enabling hot plug/swap in BIOS produces the usual USB unplug sound in Windows when it drops out & the plugged USB sound when coming back from a sleep/hibernation.
• The drive is very much alive & behaving as expected storage & performance wise based on usage & diagnostic tools but for the life of me I can't understand why windows decides to drop it entirely instead of just parking it like usual like all the other HDDs.
• I'm suspecting a driver or a BIOS issue (less of the latter as my previous 4TB is working as intended) but unsure how to approach this.

Please Help.

SPECS:

• OS: Windows 10 PRO x64
• CPU: Intel i7 7700K
• MOBO: Asus Strix X270-I
• RAM: 2x8GB G.Skill Trident
• GPU: Asus Strix GTX 1080
• Main Drive: Samsung 970 EVO PLUS SSD 256GB
• PSU: Corsair SFX SF600 GOLD

Hope this was enough to attract some help as I can't return it due to international shipping (well packaged by 3rd party).

EDIT: Added a screenshot & changed some wording.

 

[Ralston18]

Try the "powercfg /a" (without quotes) via the Command Prompt or PS Prompt.

Post the results.

Results from my computer via the PS (Powershell) prompt:

PS C:\Users\REDACTED> powercfg /a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
Hibernate
Hybrid Sleep

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S0 Low Power Idle)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Fast Startup
This action is disabled in the current system policy.

Your computer will likely have different results.

The objective being to determine what Windows "sees" with respect to the sleep configurations.

Disable all sleep states, power configurations, etc. to determine if the dissapearing/reappearing behavior ends - hopefully with the drive being always present.

Then re-enable sleep but only one step at a time allowing time ( a day or so, or a couple of reboots even) between steps. Continue to monitor the sleep states.

Keep track of what you do and if the drive dissapears again then you will likely have found the culprit.

 

[mj-88]

Try the "powercfg /a" (without quotes) via the Command Prompt or PS Prompt.

Post the results.
...

Thank you for replying, i have went ahead with that line::

The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
Hibernate
Fast Startup

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S0 Low Power Idle)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Hybrid Sleep
The hypervisor does not support this standby state.


Not meaning to be rude or anything, just that I might come across as such considering English is not my main language so I apologize in advance.
I tried following what you instructed but i noticed that it doesn't apply to my issue as I don't have to wait for days but can easily reproduce this issue with one single setting regardless of sleep states, the problem is not in the system power plan itself but the HDD inactivity timer in those plans, all my drives get suspended after a period of inactivity & I only have to double click the drive as usual to wake them up (Default), that's when the drive mechanical sound ramps up, only this new HDD (not the system) completely drops out as if disconnected even if im using the system but not accessing the HDD itself in that time.
I have attached an image to pinpoint exactly how the workaround solved this issue but ended up sacrificing a regular windows feature, all my other mechanical drives are working as intended with timers (Default).
PC-HDD power plan workaround

As you can see this option prevents all HDDs from sleeping so they remain active which helped in this case, I even tested this by setting it down to 1 minute & it always disconnects the HDD/drive in question after that 1 minute, there is no way for me to wake it up either after that using the regular method as there is no drive & the HDD itself is missing from Disk Manager, only a restart/sleep/hibernate cycle kicks it back online or forces windows to pick it up again, usure which is the case.

Hope this clarifies the issue further as i might have worded my initial post badly, if i missed on what you were trying to say then please elaborate to help me understand better.