Question [SOLVED] Powering my HDD causes my SDD to disappear

[Jon Chew]

I've had intermittent trouble with my SSD, usually in the form of it randomly appearing and disappearing (both from Windows and from the BIOS). After trial and error I seem to have narrowed it down to a power problem. The SDD seems to work fine when plugged into SATA and power, but using that same power cable to power my HDD causes the SDD to spontaneously disappear, even if I don't have the SATA cable in my HDD. I can only imagine this is the underlying cause of my computer's "disappearing SDD syndrome."

Of course, sometimes the SSD will refuse to appear at all, and it won't until I unplug the cables and plug them back in. I hope both of these issues have a common cause I can fix.

Power supply is a Corsair TX650M. I believe that should be more than enough power for the computer I have, but you folks would know more than me. Is there an obvious fix for this?

If it helps:
Windows (10) is running from an M.2 Sabrent drive, which always works.
My HDD is a Seagate with 2.5 tb
My SSD is a Samsung 870 EVO, 1tb, which I thought was the underlying problem, but I just got a replacement and it's having the same identical problem.
My motherboard is a Taichi x470.
RTX 2070 Super GPU, Ryzen 2700x CPU, a normal number of case fans, nothing crazy in terms of power output I believe

Thank you for your time! Please let me know if you need more info.

 

[Ralston18]

Not sure about the meaning of:

"The SDD seems to work fine when plugged into SATA and power, but using that same power cable to power my HDD causes the SDD to spontaneously disappear,"

[My underline.]

How are the drive connections being made with regards to both power and data?

Could be that plugging in the HDD creates a short that, in turn, makes the SDD disappear for lack of power and/or data.

Cables:

Are there any other known working SATA cables available that can be swapped in?

Could be a crack in the cable connectors that makes the problem intermittent. Sometimes connectivity is made, sometimes connectivity is not made.

Likely a plug or a port. However, inspect the actual cable itself. May be some nick or other damage.

Also: Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer. Either one or both tools may be capturing some related error codes, warnings, or even informational events when the SSD disappears.

 

[Jon Chew]

Not sure about the meaning of:

"The SDD seems to work fine when plugged into SATA and power, but using that same power cable to power my HDD causes the SDD to spontaneously disappear,"

[My underline.]

I don't know what the technical term is, but this is the kind of cable I'm using to power my drives. Everything I've seen online suggests this cable is designed to handle several drives at once.

Are there any other known working SATA cables available that can be swapped in?

I don't have any spare data cables on-hand, but I've already tried swapping them between the drives, and no matter what combination I use, it's always the HDD that takes priority over the SSD.

Sorry if I might've used the wrong term for the data cables earlier; what I mean is that, as far as I know, the problem is with the power, not with the drives' ability to communicate with the motherboard.

I'll look into those other things you mentioned. Thanks!

 

[Jon Chew]

Also: Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer. Either one or both tools may be capturing some related error codes, warnings, or even informational events when the SSD disappears.

Reliability History didn't give me anything, but Event Viewer got it:

 

[fzabkar]

AIUI, your SSD sometimes disappears even when connected on its own.

Can you show us a SMART report with CrystalDiskInfo or GSmartControl?

FYI, many people are reporting problems with your model:

https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=42876

 

[Ralston18]

Event ID 157 - Per some online searching:

"Disk has been surprise removed error".
My understanding of a surprise removal would be loss of power to the drive or just some general disconnection via port, plug, or cable.

Take another look in Reliability History, expand the timeline and look for any disk related entries be they errors, warnings, or simply informational.

= = = =

The kind of cable that you are using referred to as a "daisy chain" cable . Commonly used to connect things in series.

Generally those cables (and many others as well) are made as cheaply as possible with little or no quality control/testing.

The wires themselves could be thin and subject to breaks and cracks. However, another vulnerability is the plugs/connectors; the wire may not be fully in contact with the connection pins/ports.

Reference:

Daisy Chaining

Note: I found quite a number of similar links but most were just pushing some product or service.

What may be happening is that connectivity is lost to the drive and it is "surprised removed". Then when you plug, replug, wiggle, or otherwise move the cable about connectivity is restored. Just temporarily until expansion, contraction, vibrations, etc. cause another disconnect.

If at all possible try to obtain other known working cables to swap in for testing purposes.

Use Disk Manager to help determine and verify which Drive is Disk 0. It should be the C: drive/Boot Drive.

Focus on getting that drive to sucessfully boot and stay connected. Leave other drives disconnected.

Then add in other drives as they exist just one at a time allowing time between additions.

If that does not work then you may indeed, per @fzabkar 's post, be dealing with a problem SSD model.

Immediate objective being to simply eliminate other possible reasons (bad cabling) for the surprise removals/disconnects.

 

[Misgar]

Way back, I had a 64GB OCZ Vertex SATA SSD that disappeared from BIOS/Windows periodically. This model was famous for its vanishing tricks and very annoying. If there's a firmware update for your Samsung 870 EVO (SATA?) SSD, you might consider updating it, but copy all the data off the drive first. Re-flashing new firmware might erase all existing files.

As for the daisy chain SATA power cable problem, you could be experiencing momentary voltage drops on the 5V or 12V rails, caused by the initial start up current(s) drawn by the hard disk. You mention your hard disk is a 2.5TB Seagate, which seems an odd capacity. I'd expect 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, etc. Is the hard drive 2.5" or 3.5" form factor?

The Seagate data sheet for the 4TB ST4000LM024 2.5" drive shows the startup current on the 5V rail is 1.2A.
The Seagate ST4000NE001 4TB 3.5" drive pulls 2.0A from the 12V rail at startup. No mention is made of the 5V rail current. These are "typical" values. The initial surge of 1.2A @ 5V (2.5") or 2.0A @ 12V (3.5") might be enough to cause a momentary dip in the 5V supply applied to your SATA SSD below 4.75V. This dip could prevent the UEFI/BIOS from recognising the SATA SSD at startup, or during normal operation.

When building a PC, I don't put all my power hungry drives on one daisy chain SATA power cable, together with more susceptible devices such as SSDs. Instead I spread the load around several daisy chain SATA power cables. For large builds with more than six hard disks, I buy power supplies with three SATA power cables. That way I can connect hard drives to two power cables and SATA SSDs (if any) to the third power cable.

If your Corsair TX650M has only one SATA daisy chain power cable, connect the SATA SSD to the power connector closest to the plug that goes into the power supply. This will help to reduce the effect of power dips slightly. If your TX650M has two SATA daisy chain cables, fit the SSD on one power cable and the hard drives on the other cable. This should reduce the effect of transients created by the hard drives from affecting the SSD. You cannot entirely remove power dips. Some PSUs have built-in capacitors in the cables to help reduce the problem.

I think your TX650M might be a Tier C - Budget Gaming System power supply, if I'm reading the psu tier list correctly.
https://psutierlist.com/

As you move up the list towards Tier A - High End Gaming System, the quality and price increases. Tier C PSUs are built down to a price and voltage rail stability will not be as good as most Tier A units. It's not just a question of maximum power rating, but also good (expensive) circuit design, including the size of the 400V bulk storage capacitor (in microFarads). Cheap PSUs tend to be less stable and really cheap units can be downright dangerous. You can take solace from the fact your TX650M isn't listed in the Don't Bother range.

 

[Jon Chew]

Thank you all for looking into this so thoroughly! I unfortunately won’t have access to my computer for a couple of days so I won’t be able to follow up until then.

You mention your hard disk is a 2.5TB Seagate, which seems an odd capacity. I'd expect 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, etc. Is the hard drive 2.5" or 3.5" form factor?

You’re absolutely right, 2.5 was the form factor, not the capacity. It’s a 2 TB drive, my bad. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Misgar]

I've checked a review of the TX-650M on Tom's and it should be supplied with two separate SATA cables, each with 3 power connectors. I suggest using different cables for the hard disk and SSD.

If you don't have all the original plug-in power cables for your PSU, take great care when sourcing new cables. Not all power cables are the compatible, despite outwardly looking the same. If you "borrow" a cable from another Corsair PSU, the 5V and 12V rails might be crossed over, with catastrophic results when you power on.

2.5" drives have far lower power requirements than 3.5" drives, so I'm surprised you're having this problem. The power used by a 2.5" drive is roughly one quarter that of a 3.5" drive, with commensurately lower power rail transients. Mind you, both the SSD and the 2.5" HDD are running off the 5V rail, so there's bound to be some coupling of current surges and voltage dips.

The TX-650M is Gold rated and quite expensive, so it's not a bargain basement PSU. I've got far worse PSUs in some of my spare computers and not experienced this fault. Of course there's a vague chance your hard disk has a minor fault, so you could check SMART data.

 

[Jon Chew]

Oh damn it, I checked again. It is a 3.5 drive after all, I have no idea how I misread that before. Sorry about that—you’re probably right about the power requirements.

 

[Misgar]

Yes, 3.5" drives take bigger "chunks" out of the power supply rails. Even so I've got four systems with at least eight 3.5" hard drives in each computer and they don't affect the bootable SATA SSDs.

In my industrial servers, I think there's an option to stagger the power sequence of multiple hard drives, to avoid brown outs. It does help though that each server contains two power supplies running in parallel.

Your system with just two SATA drives really shouldn't be affected. There's a vague chance the electrolytic capacitors in your TX-650M are drying out. This doesn't affect the solid caps, but electrolytic caps age, especially at high temperatures, if they're rated at 85C and not 105C.

As electrolytics dry out, the capacitance falls and the leakage current rises. This negatively affects the stability of the associated DC supply rails. A sure sign of failed electrolytics is split tops and brown goo leaking out.

I've "recapped" a number of motherboards and power supplies, but you must be very careful with PSUs. The bulk cap sits at 400V DC (on 230V AC mains) and remains charged for some time after switch off. Don't kill yourself meddling with high voltages! Opening a PSU yourself invalidates the warranty. Leave repairs to the experts or RMA if still under warranty.

 

[fzabkar]

The bulk cap sits at 400V DC (on 230V AC mains) and remains charged for some time after switch off.

Remove the AC power cord, then press the power button on the front of the PC. This should switch on the main power rails and quickly discharge the bulk capacitor.

 

[Misgar]

When working on switched mode PSUs, I still use a setup for discharging the aguadag on old CRT televisions, where the final anode voltage could be 25,000 Volts and the tube remained charged for ages. A probe grounded to the PSU chassis with a high value series resistor soon bleeds away any remaining charge on the bulk cap. So far I've not had a shock from an ATX PSU, but have been "bitten" once or twice by old TVs where the metal chassis was conected to the 230V AC Line input (not Neutral), necessitating the use of an isolating transformer. You live and learn, or never get to do it again.

 

[fzabkar]

When working on switched mode PSUs, I still use a setup for discharging the aguadag on old CRT televisions

I use a 100W light bulb as a dummy load and capacitor bleeder.

 

[Jon Chew]

UPDATE
I finally had a professional look at my computer, and the solution was something really stupid. When I built the computer three years ago, I mistakenly plugged an RGB header of some kind into the motherboard, where it didn't belong, which caused the motherboard to siphon off power that should've been going everywhere else. For example, the fan would rev up as soon as the power supply was switched on, and this being my first PC build, I thought that was normal. Unplugging that RGB header immediately solved the power problem. Luckily, it doesn't seem like that did any long-term damage to my computer. All things considered... could've been worse, I guess?

Thank you all so much for your help!