Internal drive disappearing - help!

[ghidorah]

Hi, I've had the MEde8er 1000X3D for ages now and I love it. Never had any bother with it until recently.
 I've got an internal 1TB Sata drive and its started to stall during playback, freezing and giving the message 'I/O error'. Usually after this the drive disappears altogether and sometimes doesn't come back even after a restart.
I tried replacing the drive with a new one, formatted it (twice) and started transferring stuff over from my pc via the usb cable. eventually during transfer, it fails and the new drive again disappears.
It started doing this before I upgraded to the 3.05 firmware and continued this after the upgrade. I upgraded to V3.06 but its still doing it.
Not problem with playback on devices connected through the USB ports or over the Network, just the Internal drive.
Any help please folks?

[Mafalda]

Hi ghidorah!

Are you using the special tool to disconnect your MED1000X3D from the PC, before removing the USB cable between MED and PC?
It is strongly recommended in the firmware download post.
Did you use it, in the past, with your old hard drive?
With the PC, did you run the tools to fix eventual file system errors on the hard drives?

Mafalda

[ghidorah]

Thanks..yes, I did use the correct tools and also scanned and fixed file errors using the pc. Having lost drives in the past I'm very careful to do the correct procedures with them. I honestly don't know where to go from here with this.

[Mede8er1]

I would suggest you check the hard drive with a program like http://www.hdsentinel.com/ and normally it should be tested in sata mode for full testing.

Mede8er1

[ghidorah]

Thanks.. I'll certainly try that but the fact that I replaced the hard drive with a new one and got similar results is throwing me a bit.

[jer1956]

Had you been using the transport screws with the drive?

[ghidorah]

No i haven't been using the transport screws. The Unit really just sits in the one place and the drive inside seeme to sit pretty solid so i didn't see the need. Am i wrong? I

[jer1956]

No, but changing between using them and not using them can result in the connection not making when you slide the drive into the socket.

[Maasbommel]

Are you sure the drive is fitted tight on the sata connector?

Lift the drive a bit on the left and then move it to the sata connector to the right might help to align it better.

[ghidorah]

Thanks...I've re-fitted both drives and tried re-formatting the new one again. When its connected to the pc, i tried running the disc tools on it. It scanned the drive for a while then the drive just dropped out again and the pc sees it as 'inaccessible'
Put the old one back in, scanned that and we'll see how long its styas on. Its very frustrating this. Surely i can't have TWO faulty drives?

[Mafalda]

ghidorah,

having two hard drives with the same disappearing issue is very unlikely.
It could instead be a bad contact in the SATA connector or, worse, a fault between the SATA connector and the motherboard. To understand this, you can try to shim the drive on the left in order to keep it as close as possible to the SATA connector. But if it will continue to be unreliable, you'll need technical assistance...

Mafalda

[ghidorah]

Thanks for all the help folks. i was wondering if it was an issue with the operating software but from what you say it seems more likely to be a connection fault. I'll need to just keep an eye on it

[Duppie]

I am having exactly the same issue now 

Bought a new drive formatted it twice and during playback I sometimes get "I/O Error". What did you do to resolve this? Strangely I never touch the X3D so why should there be an issue with the connector? Could this be a firmware issue? I only noticed this from release 3.0.5 onwards. The unit is only 2 years old. This is really frustrating.

Duppie

[jammone]

Having the exact same problem, it started yesterday at once, i/o errors and the drive disappeared. The same drive on the sata connector of the pc works just fine. A week ago updated to fw 3.06, I skipped 3.05.
Could it be that the fw screwed up the sata controller?

EDIT
Flashed back to 3.0.4, HDD is working again

[Maasbommel]

There are no changes related to IO code in 3.0.5 or 3.0.6 if you check the release notes.

Please keep an eye on this 3.0.4 downgrade to see if indeed these error messages keep away on 3.0.4 and report back.

Maybe the others in this thread can also try a downgrade to confirm the error they see keeps away after running on 3.0.4