Random "loss" of shared drive.

I am running a wired network in a small office. 4 Dell boxs all running Vista Business. One computer is designated a "psuedo" server and contains a large hard drive containing all common data. All users have been configured and have access to this drive. The process seems to work just fine and then at somewhat random intervals, might be once or twice a day, might be after a couple of days, all users lose access to the drive. The only solution which always gives them renewed access is to reboot the machine that the shared drive is on. There does not seem to be any linkage of a cause to the problem, no specific use of a given program, time of day or a specific user. When one user loses accces all users do.

I have succefully used CMD to change the autodisconnect to -1 but his does not seem to solve the problem. Is there a required second step? Perhaps on the machines accessing the shared drive?


Anybody out there with a similar problem and with a solution?

Thanks for any ideas or help

It sounds like to me that the hard drive is about to die on you. Back it up immediately and expect it to die within a few weeks...
or i might be completely wrong! But my hard drive died exactly the same way...:huh::huh::huh:
The more users have access to the drive the more use you get out of it. A drive will only last for around 40,000 reads and writes.

Thank you for your comments. The data is backed-up. However, the drive is actually quite new and has exhibited this problem since virtually the first day it was put into use. Doesn't neccesarily mean it isn't dying but I think it maybe from something else.

Thanks again.