sata drive failures

[creynish]

I have built a new PC (i have been building my own for years) this time i have used two sata hard drives on a Asus Nvidianforce3 motherboard.
My daughter was on the pc on msn and the pc turned off. she could not get it to boot again so she left it and told me when i came home. I tried and the pc did boot, i thought it was probable getting hot so left for a while and tried again. it booted up and i used it for a few hours the pc then turned off and would not reboot. The antivirus (Mcafee) is bang up to date and the xp updates all done. I could not get it to boot i disconnected the drive and tried to boot and this time (as expected) it told me no operating system. I loaded xp on the second drive and put antivirus on updated and had little else on the pc. I reconnected the second drive and the pc booted up but when i look under my computer only 1 drive seen. I formatted the old drive and no pproblem with that.
I then used the second drive as my operating system and had the other for storage, thought it might be the drive that was faulty. after a week or so same problem. pc started to freeze and within an hour pc would not do anything. Turned off the pc and tried to reboot but it just hangs whilst trying to boot.
so installed xp on the original drive (that i had formatted) and then it was a total repeat of above. within a week same problem.
as i had mixed drives 120gig and a 80 i removed the 80 and installed a duplicate drive 120 and same make loaded xp done all the above and after a week same problem.
I then loaded xp on both drives and use first drive to run the system. Copy anything i need to keep on second drive but never boot this drive. after a week or less this drive will fail i then have to disconect this drive boot on drive 2 format drive 1 reload xp. copy any data i need then run a drive two until that crashes and go through this again.
I know thats long winded but its not a easy problem i have changed graphics card and diconnected anything not needed i am now down to motherboard or processor. before i start spending like mad i am hoping someone may be able to point me in the best direction. I will also be trying to get ebuyer (who supplied all the kit) to come up with an idea and hopefully a replacement part. i am hoping parts bought seperate arhave 12 months guarantee.

clive



Thread is old and locked - MidiMoto

[Eric]

Can you not return the faulty harddrive(s)? IT certainly is a confusing problem, and if it crashes no matter which drive is running the OS it might be a problem with your SATA controller. Maybe purchase a seperate SATA controller device other than the motherboard one?

[syphus]

It doesn’t sound like the hard disk drivers are defective. It sounds more like a software or driver issue.

Before you do anything else, follow these steps:

• Step one, is update the BIOS.
• Step two, is test the memory for defects. Memtest86+ is my recommendation.

These should be a standard part of system assembly, regardless of any problems.

• Step three, is test your drives for defects, to rule that out. Each hard disk drive manufacturer provides a tool that can be used to run surface scans and test for any platter degradation.

What leads me to believe that it’s a software issue, is the fact that you report Windows working fine for a week or so. Hardware issues (with the exception of bad disk sectors) would present themselves differently. For example: a defective south bridge would cause constant but intermittent crashing under load, a defective graphics card would either crash in game or present visual artefacts etc, other defective hardware components cause crashing very predictably.

Try reinstalling Windows, Service Pack 2, the latest nForce drivers (5.10 I think, but not the IDE driver) and all other relevant drivers.
Only install the absolute bare minimum of software to make the system useful, and get a better antivirus software (Mcafee is one of the worst) and antispyware software. See if the problem reoccurs.
Remember, this experiment will only work if you be extremely careful installing software and browsing on the net. If the problem doesn’t reoccur, you know it’s something you’re installing.

If it reoccurs, post back.