Hard drive failure, 4 drives max

[Krigard]

Dear Community!

I will try to explain my problem / questions as detailed as possible.
The list might be long, sorry for that.

First, some pc specs used to explain:
Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero.
Processor: Intel 6600K.
GPU: MSI GTX 1070.
SSD1 (Main OS) : 128gb OCZ-Vertex4
SSD2 (Games) : 500gb Samsung 850 Evo
HDD1 (Old Drive): 3TB Western digital red
HDD2 (New1) : 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200
HDD3 (New2): 2TB Toshiba DT01ACA200

HDD1 was staring to show signs of dying. So I decided to add some new drives before it completely died. I bought two 2tb hdd's from toshiba and installed those in the PC.
At first, the new drives had a lot of issue's...
They had problems working with steam. When adding a library, steam would crash and bug out.
So I combined the 2 new drives into 1 RAID0 array. This solved some of the issues.
The drives worked faster now. But still crashed. When launching (for example) battlefield1, it would take AGES to load. But when I restart the PC, and restart, it was quick again.

My thoughts at this point: One of the drives is bad?

So I un-RAIDed(?) them, to have 5 different volumes.
When I tried to move a (~55gb) folder from my SSD2, to both the new drives, the following happened:

http://imageshack.com/a/img924/2514/hGibma.png


Both HHD2 and HHD3 would throttle to 100%, but would only move about ~25gb/s each...
Earlier I picked up some information about 4 drives being the maximum. So I disconnected HDD1 and tried the same test again:

http://imageshack.com/a/img922/8939/i96MRf.png

Looking at this, I could see that:
E: moved around 100MB/s at about 80% to 90% Drive usage.
G: moved around 70MB/s at a constant 100% Drive usage.


Now finally the questions:
1. Is there a maximum of 5 Sata connections? (With 4 on intel controller, 1 on asmedia controller)
2. Is the HDD from Volume G: broken/failing?

I hope I explained enough, and that someone can help

Kind regards,
Kris

(PS. Don't know if the pictures work :| )

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Krigard.

Sorry to hear about your problematic WD Red drive. I'd suggest that you download DLG and run both tests (Quick and Extended), to see what's the situation with the drive: How to test a drive for problems using Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows.
It's not uncommon for a faulty drive to be causing issues with your system (including you other storage devices), so if the WD Red drive is really on its way to fail, try using your system with that drive disconnected from the mobo. Having this many drives connected to the motherboard should not cause issues like the ones you've mentioned.
You could also download the new drives' manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test them as well.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD