The Case of the Disappearing SSD Asrock Z87 Extreme4

[Brad_T9]

My issue is that one of my HDD has gone missing. I say missing because when I first installed it I could initialize it and I changed its name and added a folder. Shortly after that I went to write to it and the drive was gone. This was all in the same session. My drive that I added is an SSD Samsung Evo 125GB which I used for a time as my main drive. Prior to installing this drive I did reformat the drive using external cables so it was clean. When I first installed it in Disk management I removed the system partition because that seeme to be not needed as it wasnt the boot disk (Just adding it for games).
I have had this motherboard for some time now and my Optical drive has frequently gone missing. Sometimes a reboot would show it in the OS again for a bit and then it would disappear sometimes not. So here is the strange part I have a USB Hub that is always plugged in with two flash drives that appear as drive letters in my OS (Windows 10). When I removed the two USB sticks and rebooted my Optical drive started showing again permanently. I will say I have a lot of disks in my system there are 8 SATA plugs in my mobo and all but one is in use I have my Optical drive A0 Sata port A1 is empty the rest have drives plugged in two SSD and 4 HDD various sizes. I also have an external drive connected. and the two flash drives so that is all my storage. The bios does not recognize my SSD drive that I installed which I have read could be because of a bad power off.

The drives missing or failing to show makes it seem like I have a drive contention issue. I have looked at the IRQ ports and everything seems fine I see some sound items using the same IRQ but dont really know what I am looking for. I know the sata port and cables are good because the SSD drive replaced an aging HDD in the case. Can anyone help me out here. Thanks in advance.

 

[rocktalkrock]

When you say your HDD has gone missing, do you mean it's not showing up in Windows or in the BIOS? Can you see the drive in Device Manager under Disk Drives?

 

[Brad_T9]

When you say your HDD has gone missing, do you mean it's not showing up in Windows or in the BIOS? Can you see the drive in Device Manager under Disk Drives?

Yeah so first I removed two HDD drives and added back a new HDD and this SSD, Windows and the Bios did not see the SSD drive, I took it apart and made sure connections were good. Then the SSD was was found by OS, I changed the drive letter to X and renamed the drive, added a folder, went to move a steam game drive cannot be found. went and looked it was missing under My PC and Disk Manager, rebooted it didnt show. I do not see the drive under Device manager.Thanks for your reply

 

[rocktalkrock]

What BIOS revision do you have on your motherboard? Have you ever updated the BIOS?

On May 25th 2015 ASRock released BIOS update revision 3.20 which was meant to "Improve SATA compatibility".

You said in your original post "I have had this motherboard for some time now and my Optical drive has frequently gone missing." If all these drives are connected through the Sata ports, BIOS update 3.20 may be your answer.

 

[Brad_T9]

What BIOS revision do you have on your motherboard? Have you ever updated the BIOS?

On May 25th 2015 ASRock released BIOS update revision 3.20 which was meant to "Improve SATA compatibility".

You said in your original post "I have had this motherboard for some time now and my Optical drive has frequently gone missing." If all these drives are connected through the Sata ports, BIOS update 3.20 may be your answer.

Here is an update I was looking online and I saw where someone suggested that you update the Intel Management Engine Interface in device manager. I did do that and it did find an update the driver. So I rebooted and the SSD magically appeared in my PC I created a folder on the disk and everything. Left for a bit and it disappeared again. I rebooted again and just watched it. It disappeared after 10 mins. I have updated my bios before but it has been a while I will take a look at my version.


##Update: My Bios was out of date I flashed it to 3.40 now problem still persists after 10 mins the drive drops still only shows when I do a complete power off and power back on. If I do a restart after the drive has disappeared the drive will not come back.

##Update 2 While I could see the drive I deleted all volumes recreated and reformatted the drive and changed the drive letter. Again at 10 mins in the drive was removed. In the Event logs this is what I saw.
1. A warning iaStorA Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.
2.A warning Disk 3 has been surprise removed.