HDD disappears, after restart it reappers, atapi and disk errors in the Event Viewer

Hi folks,


So, the problem:

one of my HDDs suddenly disappeared, like it was turned off or something. I restarted the PC and the HDD reappeared and is fully functional since then. Right after the incident I checked some files on it. Well, most of the image files seemed to be damaged, that is they had parts missing and stuff. Checking them later they seemed repeared.

I did some googling and I read somewhere that I should check the Event Viewer looking for errors and warnings labelled 'Disk'. Doing so I've find tons of events spanning back about one and a half month. There are two types: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\DR1 during a paging operation." and "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR5.". What's really scary is that the HDD indentifier part (DR1, DR2 etc) varies from event to event, like all of my HDDs were faulty.

While checking the Event Viewer I also noticed an awful bunch of 'atapi' errors stating: "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort3." (the IdePort number remains the same at all events). What's even more intriguing is that the first of these 'atapi' error events is dated exactly to the time of my HDD disappearing. They keep coming since then.


What I'd like to find out:

I read somewhere that the first two errors indicate a serious HDD failure very soon. Is that true?
(Personally I don't think so, since I've been getting those errors for more than a month now (without me knowing about them) and my HDDs are functioning.)

What do these atapi errors mean? What do I have to do?

What happened?

I would truly appreciate any help!
Thanks,
Ben

I am encountering the same problem. I updated my system in February to Windows 7 and installed a new main HDD (Seagate 160GB PATA master on IDE 0) and video card. I kept the old mobo, slave CDR-W and backup HDD (Maxtor 40GB PATA master on IDE 1). Constantly get the "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort3." and "The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR1, is not ready for access yet." Once that occurs the secondary HDD (D Drive) is lost. Re-booting doesn't always bring it back immediately.

I've replaced the IDE cables and swapped out HDDs for the D drive. Neither have been the solution. Re-seated all the connectors. Same thing. Never had the problem when running the devices under Windows XP. Ran Maxtor Disk Diagnostics and found no errors on the drive.

Totally confused. I've scoured the forums and techie support areas and haven't found anything more than what I've tried so far. The problem even occured once while I was in the middle of a fresh backup of my Documents folder.

I too would appreciate any help.
Rob

Welcome to the Windows 7 Forum website robnelli!

Okay... being a former owner of a setup very similar to what you have; here's what you need to do.

1. Put both IDE hard drives on the same IDE cable to Port 0 on the motherboard. Make the Seagate the Master drive and the Maxtor the Slave drive. You can set your hard drives jumper settings to Master for the Seagate and Slave for the Maxtor or your can set both to Cable Select. If you go Cable Select, make sure the Seagate is on the last plug and the Maxtor on the intermediate plug. Make sure your ribbon cable is an 80 conductor cable with 40 pin plugs.

2. Put the DVD/CD-RW drive on the IDE port 1 set it as a Master drive. Depending on the rating of this drive you may have to use an 80 conductor ribbon cable with this also.

3. Remember, it's always best to keep the hard drives on the same IDE channel if at all possible. Always keep the DVD/CD drive(s) on the other IDE channel, if possible.

You should be good to go now. Verify the Master and Slave settings by checking the BIOS, it will tell you which drives are Master and Slave drives.

After you install the operating system, make sure the drive with the OS on it is labeled the "C" drive. Make the slave hard drive the "E" drive and make the DVD/CD drive the "D" drive. Windows likes it better this way. These letter labels can be changed through the Control Panel in Administrative Tools, Computer Management, then Disk Management.

If you need more help let us know.

Well, I sure thought you were onto something, but alas, my problem persists. I made your recommended changes on 5/8 and on 5/11 the problem came back:

The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR7, is not ready for access yet.

<System>
<Provider Name="Disk" />

<EventID Qualifiers="49156">15</EventID>

<Level>2</Level>

<Task>0</Task>

<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>

<TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-05-11T21:25:32.053984400Z" />

<EventRecordID>18140</EventRecordID>

<Channel>System</Channel>

<Computer>Rob-PC</Computer>

<Security />

</System>


- <EventData>
<Data>\Device\Harddisk1\DR7</Data>

<Binary>0300680001000000000000000F0004C0040100009D0000C0000000000000000000000000000000008B730A010000 0000FFFFFFFF000000004000000A0000010000200A1240032000000000003C0000000000BE0058434B8500000000F0F10785 C048D9840000000028000000000000000100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</Binary>

</EventData>


</Event>



When I shutdown and restarted, the drive was no longer recognized in the CMOS during system setup. It behaves like there may be a bad connection. But every time I re-seat the cables, it works fine for a few days before disappearing. And it's currently on a new IDE cable (came with the new Master 160GB HD). Any suggestions?

Rob

Could it be a sign of a M/B failing?

Your hdd may be failing. Check it using tuneup for bad sectors and then check your M/B

I've checked the HD using the Maxtor diagnostics program and even swapped it out for a Seagate and had the same results. The problem occurs on both IDE controllers 0 and 1. The M/B is new (as of December) when I built the system. How would I check the M/B?

Not sure how you'd test a M/B but the reason I made the suggestion is that I recently suffered a problem where I lost the system drive. First sign of it was on boot up when I kept getting error message of 'boot disk failure'. After several attempts It loaded and the system appeared to be running as normal for about an hour. Then it hung in a wait state and I could not get out of it so had to do a hard re-set.
Upon trying to re-boot again the system drive had completely disappeared, all had showing was my 1TB hdd which through an adapter plug was running off one of my Sata ports on the M/B.
I disconnected that drive and used it's plug into my system drive. All loaded as per normal. No issues with the 'c' drive or it's files.

I'll have to investigate further but either I've got some sort of bios error or the SATA controller which had been running my system drive has failed.