I purchased a 4TB WD Blue SATA SSD three weeks ago, and its disappeared overnight from Windows 10 file explorer (and BIOS) 3 times after formatting and being placed into service. It’s the third disk in my system and replaces a 2TB spinning Hitachi (a secondary, non-bootable drive). I used the same SATA data cable and power supply connector as the Hitachi for the Blue. After a week of use, the first time the Blue disappeared overnight it was in use by a program (not idle or sleeping). I swapped its position with my DVD player (swapped data cable and power connector) and it booted fine. SMART says nothing is wrong with the drive. So I moved it back to its old spot and that also lasted about a week. The second time it disappeared overnight it was idle. So I completed replaced the SATA cable with a new, unsed one. I also move the Blue to a never used power supply connector. That lasted just one night. Again overnight it disappeared. Two reboots and its still missing in Windows and BIOS. The SATA cable and power supply connector appear snug and tight, but after simply touching them a little, the Blue will come back after a boot. Its like a short is occurring but I don’t see how it’s not a fault in the Blue with me using 2 different SATA data cables and 2 different power supply connectors. A pair of which worked fine for years on a Hitachi drive. BTW, the Blue came with the latest firmware according to WD Dashboard.
Which motherboard are you using?
Some motherboards can be very critical when using SSD’s
Asus Z97-A
Changing cables is the first option, but you did that already many times.
What’s happening if you connect the 4TB WD Blue SATA SSD to your computer by use of USB-docking.
I’m coming to realize the Blue disappears during a system backup each night. I use Easeus ToDo Backup. I got a successful full backup on all drives (including the Blue which is about half full) at the end of May to an external USB drive. Then I got several days (almost a week) of successful nightly incremental backups. But for 3 days in a row the backups failed (I think it again was trying to read all the data for a full backup). The backups start at 1am and fail before completion because the drive disappears from Windows. Above logs show one failure at 1:16 and another at 5:21 so the timing isn’t consistent.
The Blue won’t reappear to Windows or the BIOS with a warm reboot. It takes a cold boot to get the drive back. So the question is this a Blue problem (being a new drive) or is this my system of like 6 years (containing another SSD and HDD)? I’ve returned the drive so I can try again with another Blue.
I reformatted my 2 TB Blue My Passport as ntfs on windows10 and now properties only show a capacity of 37GB. How can I fix it and reinstall original apps and firmware? anyone have an Idea ? Jeff13
Hi All - I struggled with this same issue for weeks until I finally found a solution. I had purchased a WD Blue 1TB internal SSD and installed it as an extra internal drive in my system for storage. I already had another SSD drive installed with my OS, along with a regular HD for my main storage. Both were working fine. However, every time I booted my computer the new WD drive would show up in my file explorer but then disappear after five minutes or so. If I shut down normally it would not reappear. It only showed back up again after I held the power button and did a hard reset. But again, it would disappear after several minutes. I tried everything; updated the bios, changed cables and SATA ports, I tried to update device drivers, and played with the power management settings, changed drive letters, but nothing worked. However, I had the feeling that the drive was somehow losing power and causing it to disappear in Window (and in the bios). When I combined that insight with the need to do a hard reset (hold the power button) to get the drive to reappear again I started investigating the SATA hot plug setting in bios. The normal setting in bios is to have this disabled. However, when I manually changed this setting to enable this specific SSD hard drive cable to always have power, the problem went away. What I believe was happening was some type of power inconsistency that was shutting off the SSD drive, and since the hot plug setting was disabled, it was not powering back up again. Once I changed this setting in bios, the problem went away. I’ve been running this way for several weeks now and the WD SSD drive is now working fine. Hopefully, this will help someone else with this very frustrating problem.
