The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period
Beneath my desk I have an Intel i5 (Asus H67) powered Windows 2008 R2 server running serving as a NAS with a whole bunch of hard drives. The disk mode is set to 'RAID' in the BIOS because of a RAID 1 array I use to store my important data. All the other disks are AHCI since they are not configured in any RAID.
The problem
One of those other disks is a 1.5TB Samsung disk coming from an external hard drive that I was not using, and it's that disk that gave me a few headaches. On random occasions - after a few hours to a day - this disk disconnected from the whole system and I was not able to enable it again except for a full shutdown. When I checked the Windows log events I noticed this entry:
The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period
Cause: iaStor
Id: 9
Type: Error
I searched the web for solutions and found out that this disk could possibly not support Intel's Link Power Management. I tried disabling the LPM function in WIndows' energy management options, altered the LPM registry, but without result.
When I was monitoring the disks using HDTune I noticed that this disk's standard was not ATA but ATAPI. ATAPI is a standard developed to connect other devices such as CD and DVD drives to ATA ports. The protocol translates the commands and responses by embedding them in ATA packets for transmission on the ATA cable. So this disk was probably not responding to the AHCI/LPM commands like it should as a normal disk which caused it to disconnect from the system.
Solution
In the BIOS I can enable the hot swap function for disk, enabling this solved the whole problem and kept my disk connected. I do not know if this problem and fix is H67/P67 chipset related or specifically Asus related.
So if you are having this problem too, this is what you could try out:
- Update your Intel Rapid Storage driver
- Disable Intel's Link Power Management in Windows' energy management section
- Alter the LPM registry to ensure it is disabled: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor
- Try to connect it to a different port if you have multiple SATA controllers
- Enable hot swappable disks in the BIOS if available
- Set disk mode to IDE
- Get a new disk using the ATA standard if it is using the ATAPI standard
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-025783.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#ATAPI
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?87197-SOLVED-Vertex-3-Huge-Windows-freezes-due-to-iaStor0-device-problem
http://www.paulscomputerservice.net/articles/article.php?ID=97