All Fixes for: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2

Drive controller errors may show up in the Event Viewer as:

The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.
or:

The driver detected a controller error on \device\ide\ideport1

Disk Issues and Defects

The first thing to be concerned about is a disk defect, especially if the system hardware or drive configuration hasn’t been changed lately.

Before you head off and test the drive, it’s a much better idea to back it up. The reason is simple, the drive may only have a couple minutes to live and running an elaborate deep scan on it will stress it quite a bit. Many times hard drives fail completely when put under high load, such as a whole image backup or a bad sector check.

If you can copy and paste your most important data first, that would probably be best.

RAID Issues

In recent years the error “The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2” is covering up a severe disk defect within RAID systems on some servers.

It’s quite peculiar because the RAID utility that ships with the RAID controller fails to realize a disk is bad until the disk generally fails completely. We have had dozens of customers report this issue even on brand new servers!

Hence, run a disk check after backing up your data:

Running a Disk Bad Sector Check

After backing up at least the most important files to another set of disks, use the command prompt as administrator and run:

CHKDSK <drive letter>: /R or /B

for example:

CHKDSK D: /B

If it’s a disk drive that can’t be dismounted you will need to reboot and the check will run before Windows boots. Remember these utilities can take up to an entire day to finish and stress the disk to the maximum, which is probably not a good idea when you know the disk is already on its last legs.

Hardware Issues

If hardware was changed, replaced, or if new drivers were installed you may want to check into the following:

The error “The driver detected a controller error ” could be cabling defect, try different cables (shorter & better quality). Make sure the cable you use is rated for the hard disk speed you have, such as 6gbps (SATA 6 versus 3). Also cable length may be an issue. Try a shorter one.
Controller defects (usually it’s inside the motherboard) are also common. If you have a computer store nearby, ask for a new controller card and plug your drives to that one for a test.
Ram defects. These are very difficult to pinpoint. Even standard RAM checker tools, such as memtest86+ (www.memtest.org), don’t find all types of failures and sometimes need multiple passes to run into a bad RAM area.

Some times if the issue is related to drives you could try reinstalling ATA channels 0 and 1. Go to device manager–> IDE ATA / ATAPI Controllers–> and delete ATA channel 0 (2x) and ATA channel 1 (2x). Reboot and check Event Viewer logs for new entries.

If the hard drive cable or plug or the SATA controller itself is an issue, try switching the hard disk connection from SATA controller 0 to controller 1 or use different ports.

Another common strategy to discriminate all hardware and driver possibilities other than the hard disk itself is to simply remove the hard drive and plug it into a different PC. Run the data recovery and disk check on the new computer.

The Best Life Insurance for Your Data

The best way to cope with controller and disk errors is to simply have multiple backups: ideally a backup to another disk, the cloud, another site, or a NAS. Using an automated backup tool, such as BackupChain, all options are available and may be fine-tuned to your needs.

BackupChain Features

BackupChain is a server backup software for Windows Server 2012 R2 with a Professional Edition for PC backups and various additional modules to back up a variety of services. Using these modules you can set up hundreds of customized backup scenarios to protect your infrastructure.
Beyond the typical feature set of a server backup solution, you can also set up a remote backup server or a backup server to the cloud and backup VMs while running without stopping, whether local, to a network share, or to the cloud.
If you are looking for the best backup software for Windows and Hyper-V, you may be interested in BackupChain’s virtual backup features, for example, that allow you to backup Hyper-V VM while running, to achieve a true online server backup. BackupChain also offers deduplication backups for a variety of platforms, such as VirtualBox backups and VMware virtual machine backup in addition to Hyper-V. Naturally, the Server Edition and Server Enterprise Editions both support cluster shared volume backup for Hyper-V and all main virtualization platforms can be backed up using full, incremental, differential, and granular backup of virtual machines. Recovery is also accelerated using granular recovery for virtual machine backups, which allows direct access into the VM’s file system when restoring, within seconds.

File and data backups are equally important, whether inside a VM or on a physical host. For those types of settings we offer versioning backup which you could use in endless different settings, such as in addition to using BackupChain as your Microsoft Exchange backup software or for FTP file backup and FTP data backup.

Other features include Microsoft SQL Server backups and backup for QNap and Synology network devices. We also have a freeware for Windows section that includes a freeware tool called DriveMaker, which you can use to mount FTP as a drive to your desktop or Windows Server for free.