Hard drive keeps disconnecting when rendering

No idea what's going on but today my external USB-C 4TB SSD drive keeps disconnecting when rendering. At first it happened when rendering HQX 10-bit DNxHR and now its happening when rendering DNxHQ. Though it may not even be codec related. Ive restarted the computer several times. The whole drive disconnects during the render and then Resolve freaks out and cannot read the drive and the media goes offline. What in the world is happening? Never had this issue before.

Using Windows 10.
Studio Blade 15 laptop w RTX 2080 Super-Q
64GB RAM

[Dwaine Maggart]

Is this a drive you are rendering to? Or a drive with your source media? Or both?

Sounds like it could be a drive issue. Do you have another drive to test with?

I always recommend working from internal drives only.

Use external drives only for backup and archiving.

Power settings that might be letting something go to sleep?

Thanks for the feedback. Regarding...

POWER SETTINGS / SLEEP:
This is not an issue with the computer sleeping or power settings, though I have had that issue before. This is specifically when rendering. As in, almost immediately when it starts rendering.

DRIVES:
This is an external USB-C drive. 4TB SSD. Internal is preferable, but when on the move and working from a laptop an internal drive is not possible for handling this kind of content and this much of it. Not even sure there is a second slot where a second internal drive can be installed.

DWAINE:
Yes I am rendering to this drive, and this is also the drive of the source media. I suppose I can do a test, copying the PNG sequence to an internal drive and rendering it. I will give that a try. Though, this issue started not long after upgrading to the latest version of resolve. Also I've been using this laptop for 5 months and never had an issue yet. Been doing a lot of work on it also, with similiar media types and sizes. PNG sequences, etc.

The drive disconnected again when trying to render the 4K PNG sequence to a QT DNxHQ. The only work-around I've found is to allow Resolve to cache the PNG sequence (DNxHQ) and then to render it out as a Quicktime DNxHQ file while clicking the advanced option to render from the cache files. Rendering right from the PNG files throws the whole Z: drive offline.

Update:

I tried a few render tests of the PNG sequence:

1. Render from external USB-C SSD to internal SSD: SUCCESS.
2. Render from external USB 3.0 Backup drive to external USB-C SSD: Success
3. Render from external USB 3.0 Backup drive to itself: SUCCESS

From these tests it seems that it only fails when rendering from the USB-C SSD to itself. So maybe it is a drive issue? No idea what would cause that. Very strange.

Even rendering to DNxHR HQ is causing the drive to disconnect. For some reason letting the computer render the same clip to a DNxHR HQ cache never has. I dont get it.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Have you tried a different drive?

If you think it's related to a Resolve update, go back to the version you think was working, and see if that's really the case.

Have you tried a different drive?

If you think it's related to a Resolve update, go back to the version you think was working, and see if that's really the case.

Hi Dwaine,
I went back 2 versions today and encountered the problem with every version. Tried:
16.2.5
16.2.4
16.2.3

Im trying to free up some space on the drive to see if that may be triggering the disconnect. What I cant figure out though, is why, if it is the drive, why caching the PNG sequence as DNxHQ files works fine. But when rendering the same PNG sequence to a DNxHQ file from the delivery page, the drive disconnects. Why would one method of rendering consistently work and the other method consistently not work if it is the drive?

Update: Having no other ideas, I thought maybe since the 4TB drive was 90% full it might have something to do with it. So I cleared off about 1.5TB so its about half full and now rendering seems to work fine. So I it seems to be a combination of things happening. Yes, probably largely the fault of the drive. But Im still puzzled as to why caching the PNG sequence to DNxHQ works fine but rendering it to DNxHQ from the delivery page does not. Is there a difference in the way resolve writes to or manages writing to the hard drive from the delivery page as compared to just caching from the edit page? I still dont get why one always works and the other always doesnt.

Experiencing similar issues with Editshare system and any other network drives