Solved Resurrecting an old thread - PLEASE HELP

[WookieFan]

Hey all,

I know, I am a Win7 user, but am having the exact same issue that has been described in two closed and unanswered threads in these fora.

I have a Gigabyte MA770-UHD motherboard (on-board AMD RAID controller), bought as a replacement for an MSI wonder-board (I SO miss that thing). As a result of the MSI failure, I upgraded from Vista x64 Ultimate to Win7 x64 Enterprise (meaning, I did a fresh install of Win7 x64 Ent, since the replacement of the MB voids my license for Vista x64 Ultimate).

With the MSi board (AMD socket AM2/2+) and NVIDIA chipset, I never had a problem with a RAID 0 volume I had set up. Worry free.

Immediately after I activated my copy of Win7 however, using the AMD AHCI compatible RAID driver (provided with the Gigabyte motherboard), the RAID volume just disappears (unmounts) after 10 minutes of inactivity (update: it almost immediately unmounts - I barely have time to move one (1) 3.5 GB file from the drive back to my system drive before this happens). It does not appear in the Disk Management console (after unmounting), and will not appear after a rescan for disks. The only way the RAID volume appears in Disk Management is to restart the computer, at which point the whole mess starts all over again.

I have tried uninstalling the drivers (with deletion of said drivers) in an attempt to have MS Update find a better driver, which causes the computer to hang at the Windows splash page on restart.

Seriously, WTF?

The whole point of having a RAID volume is to be able to store large amounts of data (ie, use the computer as a HTPC), but I can't do that if my RAID volume disappears ten minutes after login or after the computer goes to sleep.

Please help. I am at my wits' end...

 

[WookieFan]

Re: Resurrecting an old thred - PLEASE HELP

Hey - I wanted to post what I believe to be a solution to this issue, which I hope will help others searching for solutions.

I also have a Thermaltake Armor MX case - it's a great ATX form factor, with a removable 3.5" x4 drive bay. The bay is partially cooled by a dedicated exhaust fan. Using good old troubleshooting, I found that the exhaust fan was coated in dust and not working properly, in addition to high temperatures (85-90 deg Fahrenheit) in my computer room.

The drives (2x 500 GB WD "green" EADS) were just shutting down after overheating.

While I believe this to be the resolution, I have obviously not had a chance to test it fully. I have cleaned the fans and left the removable bay slightly out of it's housing to allow for more air flow. And I am keeping the room at more appropriate temps, which should not be a problem as we head into winter.

So, if you have this problem, check your cables, power supply and airflow. Do the basic instead of freaking out like I did.

I'll be posting on Win7 fora from now on, but I AM a fan of Vista, and I really think it got a bad rap. Good luck, all.