My Book Home 1TB connected by eSata disappears after going to sleep [ Edited ]

[j3velez]

I bought one My Book Studio Edition II (2tb) the last month by amazon, and I have the same problem.  I checked all the suggestions made by users but I cant fix the problem. The drive still dissappearing after going to sleep. My drive has the last firmware update and a good cable. Please I need HElp.

[Accura]

Just bought a My Book Studio Edition II (2TB) and connect it via eSata.

Had exactly the same problem described by everyone here. Once the drive goes into standby mode (LED blink once every 4 sec) The drive letter disappears from Windows. Only way to get it back is to power cycle it using the Power Button behind the enclosure.

I have updated to the latest JMicron drivers, the latest WD firmware. Nothing seems to help.

The level of support/features from WD for eSata seems so limited.

[Accura]

I've found a Microsoft Support article on the SATA issue.

support.microsoft.com/kb/977178/

After installing the hotfix, it seems to solve my problem of WD My Book Studio Edition II (2TB) not waking up after it goes to sleep.

The cause as described by MS:

When you resume a computer from sleep or from hibernation, the SATA hard disk drivers require the SATA hard disks to be ready within 10 seconds. However, a large SATA hard disk may take longer than 10 seconds to be ready. In this situation, the resume operation times out.

While we are not sleeping or hibernating the computer, it seems like WD My Book Studio Edition II might need more than 10secs to wake up, hence Windows SATA drivers might report an operation time out thus removing the drive letter.

[TechieInCalgary]

Mine does it on XP unfortunately, but that fix may help the Windows 7 / Server 2008 people!

[TechieInCalgary]

Thank you for the replies. From an engineering perspective, I understand what you are saying regarding cable lengths, versus signal strength and other issues with longer length and how that could be the issue.

There are a number of reasons that I don't believe that what you stated is my issue:

1) I have already updated my "MyBook" to the latest firmware and still have the issue from time to time.

2) Despite using one of those adapters and a short cable from it to the drive, the drive functions quite well if it is not left idle. I have not had any data corruption or difficulties running the drive and I use it for data storage and running Virtual Machines every working day during software development and support.

3) The drive only presents problems when it is left idle.

4) I have noted that after going to sleep, the light on the front can be active, indicating that it sees the request from the computer (it begins the "Kit Car" light cycle), yet the drive inside the enclosure appears to fail to start.

5) Having a scheduled job to write the date and time to a file on the drive at 8 minute intervals has virtually eliminated the problem. (10 minutes intervals almost eliminated it.)

6) It is stated above that all WD sata drives monitor the power signal from the data cable. A very easy and quick search found the specification for the PHY layer for eSATA and it is dual differential signals with NO POWER SIGNAL  WHATSOEVER. In-between the PHY layer and the LINK layer there IS a slumber signal which REQUIRES the PHY to become completely idle and there is a signal from the PHY interface back for a COMWAKE_DETECT signal to wake up the inteface if the other end starts talking. Perhaps the interface in the computer FOLLOWING THE STANDARD and going into slumber state causes the drive to believe that it is disconnected and it does not wake up properly when signals are re-applied.

7) I have my power settings to always be on (except for monitors).

Reasons why it may be:

1) I am using an Intel controller on the Dell MOBO.

2) I am using an adapter bracket with external cable.

3) The drive may be overheating despite being vertical and raised from the desk, but I can't tell, as the SMART data is NOT passed through on the eSata interface.

Perhaps I'll try sitting it on a muffin fan or something similar to force airflow and see if the results vary.

[sickandtired]

Well, I can definitely prove that this is not an eSATA issue. I have the MyBook 1TB connected to a Fedora Linux box via USB 2.0 and I have the same problem. The drive has completely disappeared from /dev and rebooting the server does not help. The only thing that fixes the issue is power cycling the drive. None of my drives are configured to spin down on a signal from the OS, so I know it is not a software issue. I have the drive sitting vertical on top of the minitower and that could be causing an overheating condition. I will try moving the drive to a cooler location and see if the problem occurs again. This issue is very frustrating because it seems to occur randomly. I can go weeks and days without any problems and then the drive suddenly disappears.

[cazber]

I have the same problem, both at work, and home.

At home, I have a 1TB WD HomeEdition, that works fine using USB and FireWire. After connecting it with a ESATA cable, it stated to disappear from my computer (I have "Turn harddisk of" to "Never"). I am using Win 7 64 bit at home.

At work, I was using Windows XP, and had my 1TB (not the same as at home) connected with a ESATA cable. This has been working fine for months (ever since I connected it using ESATA).

A couple of days ago, I installed Windows 7 at work, and now I also get the disconnect problem there.

At home, the WD drive, and computer is located in a shed outside my house. The temperature there is about 8 degree celcius, so overheating is not an option.

To me, it seems like WD drives don't like Windows 7, but I can see other people having the same problems both on XP, and Linux, so I guess I'm wrong.

I hope nobody suggest using FireWire, as this is just too slow. When trying to back up my home computer, using Win 7 backup, I stopped it after 3 days, and then it was just 54% ready. This was when I connected my WD drive using ESATA, and the backup was done in less than 24 hours.

It seems like something goes wrong in the WD drive itself, when using ESATA. When I restart to get my drive back, I have to pull the power cord, and reinsert it, or else the drive is not recognized at all.

[TechieInCalgary]

I have mine sitting on a 4" muffin fan, noisy, but effective. When I do lots of data manipulation on the drive (defrag, large backups, doing something intensive in a virtual  machine hosted on the drive etc.), I can *feel* how hot it gets with my hand *over* the enclosure. This is with a *green* WD drive!  I have since noticed a correlation between doing something intensive (like the defrags that were scheduled to run at night), the temperature and the disappearing drive. 

The muffin fan is too noisy to leave on all the time, so I have taken to turning it on when I *know* I'm going to run a "hot" operation. I suppose I could put it under the desk in a box or drawer to muffle the noise for testing.  So far, it seems to have mitigated the disappearing problem. I wonder if leaving the sides (cover) off the drive would help.

I may be moving my drive into a similar enclosure that has cooling if I can't find a solution to using their enclosure.

Based on more recent posts, I suspect there are multiple issues.

[XiaoMustafa]

WD support was just  useless.

 i have a virtualized windows 2003 server and i bought My Book Essential 1.5T for backup purposes.

    server crashes each time during the schdeuled backup at random times.

   some time on 10% and some time 60% backup is done,and server crashes,

   only problem is with backup harddrive (MY Book Essential) server works fine with other backup options i.eoverthe network.

i have updated the firmware aswell.

it looks like my book stops respodning after some time or goes to sleep or something.

If any of you's get solution for this issue please post it.

Regards

Thanks

[ellswrth]

I'm one of many people affected by this issue.

I have a MyBook 1.5 TB attached to my Dell Latitude through an eSATA connection. The Dell systems have a disk controller made by a little known company called Intel which doesn't appear on the list of supported controllers.

The drive regularly disconnects itself during operation, usually in the middle of READ or WRITE operations. As an example, this morning it abandoned ship in the middle of copying a 6GB VM image to it.

The cable is the recommended length (it is the cable which shipped with the drive, by the way) and has no connection problems.

It exhibits the same behaviour on multiple systems - the problem is not limited to my own system.

It makes it totally unsuitable for its intended purpose, which is to act as a backup drive to contain VM and backup images.

The issue was reported to WD when I initially got the drive, but the response was to fault the hardware to which it was connected and I see that continues despite the variety of reports here of the same problem on multiple hardware configurations.

If it said on the box "only works as expected with certain controllers" I could have made an appropriate decision on its purchase.

I have no real hope for a fix for this or even a response, since my drive is a year old and I am running XP SP3, so I guess I'm just expressing my disappointment in this product.