I have 10 WD 2TB 64 mb buffer Caviar Green hard drives in computer. I am using 2 versions, 2 x WDC WD20EADS-00MVWB0 and 8 x WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0. They work fine in Windows XP Pro SP3 32 bit and Vista Ultimate SP2 64 bit, but under Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, they randomly disappear. If I reboot in XP or Vista, the missing drive returns and then if I reboot into 7, it reappears. In 2 occasions, the drive got wiped but managed to recover data. I found out from an IT service tech that they had similar problems and traced it to Windows 7 aggressive energy saving features. I tried to find and turn everything off in Windows 7, but problem still there. All hard drives are using a HighPoint 2320 SATA controller and until I started using Windows 7 64 bit, I never had this problem. I have tried Disk Check, reformatting, but nothing seems to work. I have already purchased another 10 WD 2TB drives, but this time they will be Caviar Black which do not seem to have this problem. Is there anything that will fix this problem?
I am having similar problems with the WD20EARS 2Tb drive. Searching around it appears one problem is that the drive has a slow spin up rate and that Win & waits for a short while (but not long enough) and when it cannot see the drive is up to speed simply goes to a blue screen. There is a Microsoft Hotfix. I installed it but it did not solve the problem. The problem manifests itself whenever Win 7 goes into sleep mode. Switch off sleep mode and the problem is not there but personally the sleep mode is one of those excellent functionalities that I really want! Especially as it saves electricity but also means the machine makes no noise over night if in sleep mode. Please between Microsoft and WD go and fix it! It’s not right that we pay for hardware and operating systems and then find it does not deliver to promise.
