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Hi!

I've got a strange issue with my motherboard. Basically, occasionally, one of the 8 hard drives I have connected will disappear, this happens only when the PC has been off. It seems like only one drive: I've had to rename it to "I drop" and use it for archival and backup purposes, lol. xD

It's definitely not SATA cables: I've swapped all of the cables out countless times, no avail. Definitely not the drive itself; it happens with anything I have connected. Before I fitted my mass of harddrives, the same happened to my DVD drive. I eventually thought the drive was faulty, until it started dropping my OS drive and my PC wouldn't boot into windows for obvious reasons. Usually fixes itself after several restarts though.

As far as sending the board back, I really can't be bothered to strip my entire PC down and send the board off - RMA is not an option since it's not critical unless it starts dropping my OS drive again, meh. Also it's so sporadic I'd have a hard time proving it as a fault. It's funny because I own dozens of cheap/mid-range MSI and Gigabyte motherboards, use them a lot and they're all fine. The two Asus boards I've had, both £250+ boards, have both developed issues (my Maximus IV Extreme's USB controller fried). Guess there's more to go wrong, last time I'll buy an expensive board, I tell you. (I find the chip's sweet spot with OC then set'n'forget). But okay, I'm ranting.

Anyway, tl;dr:

Asus Maximus VII Formula randomly drops SATA connections, usually the same one, but it's not cables or the port itself (since restarting solves the issue and I've changed the cables so many times, even for brand new ones. Also the port which it decides to drop is seemingly random.

Also, interestingly, if I mess with the drive setup, it's usually fine for a few weeks, then it starts happening occasionally, then every single day. Any ideas?

Thanks!

Wren

That's an interesting problem. I looked at the info page for that board and noticed that only some of the SATA ports on the board are native to the Intel chipset. The rest are run by ASMedia controllers. You mentioned that it was not always the same port, but you may want to pay attention to see if the dropouts always happen on one of the ASMedia ports. Maybe you have a flaky controller, or maybe the ASMedia SATA Express drivers are immature.

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/MAX ... fications/

Aether wrote:

I looked at the info page for that board and noticed that only some of the SATA ports on the board are native to the Intel chipset. The rest are run by ASMedia controllers. You mentioned that it was not always the same port, but you may want to pay attention to see if the dropouts always happen on one of the ASMedia ports. Maybe you have a flaky controller, or maybe the ASMedia SATA Express drivers are immature.

Indeed. It looks like only four (4) of the SATA ports and one SATA Express port uses the native Intel chipset. This means at least two of your 8 drives are using the 3rd party ASmedia controller (check your motherboard manual to see which ones). I'd go just short of guaranteeing that your problems are with drives plugged into the 3rd party controller. I would check for updated drivers on the Asus website, but your best bet is to just avoid using those ports.

Can you consolidate a 2-3 older drives into a larger, new one?

Good points. I'll take a look in the back and see which port the HDD that drops is connected to. If it is a flaky Asmedia controller: I'll just live with it, I think since the board works fine otherwise.

Interestingly, since I re-booted my PC a few times since the last drop, it hasn't happened. Course, now that I've said that, it'll probably happen. xD

The Egg wrote:

Can you consolidate a 2-3 older drives into a larger, new one?

I've been meaning to do this, actually, so probably a good idea. I've got 5 1TB hard drives, 3 actually 'bodged' in the back panel. I think I'll replace them with a pair of 4TB drives, I've also got 3 SSDs in there, so I should be able to lose a few drives and hook them all up to the Intel Controller.

I tend to lean towards Western Digital or Toshiba drives, I'm mainly looking for performance and reliability over cost to be honest. Any suggestions? Thanks

Wren

I also prefer WD for mechanical drives. (I have never retired a Seagate from old age; every one at home or work has been taken out of service from SMART warnings within the first 4 yrs.) I have had good luck with WD reds recently. When paired with an SSD boot drive, the performance is fine for my needs. I have been staying away from WD greens, as I have had a couple go bad. FYI, Microcenter has had some great deals recently on WD red drives if you live close to one. (I have had delivered drives arrive DOA from poor packaging, so I prefer to buy mechanical drives locally.)

Was going to post about 3rd party (ASMedia) controller but someone already beat me to it.

If the detection issue is at POST rather than OS-level, driver isn't the issue. Might be an out of date flaky firmware. Asus doesn't generally provide firmware updates for the offboard controllers, but you can probably get it from station-drivers (for the love of gawd, make sure adblock or noscript is enabled before visiting that site) or elsewhere on the web if you do some digging.

Also worth noting, make sure you're OS drive is on the Intel controller. Aside from hopefully eliminating the intermittent detection issue on the critical OS drive, you'll get substantially better performance on an Intel SATA port.