Is SATA crashing my computer?

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Paraphobe80d

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Dec 27, 2005
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Hi all,

First off here are the specs of my computer

ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 SLI
AMD 64 3500+
PNY GeForce 6600 256mb DDR
MAXTOR 200gb SATA

Here's my problem.. My computer got up and running fine with windows XP.
all of the sudden, it crashed.. (went to the blue screen of death) and restarted. This happened over and over as i tried to restart windows with new bios settings.. etc.

there were many hours of trouble shooting.. changed ram(which seemed to work for a few minutes, but didn't). Thought it could be my mother board.. so i upgraded to the Fatal1ty.

Now i get constant file corruption errors, or sometimes it just can't find important system files. IF i do get windows up and running, i install a game and it runs fine... until i reboot. Then when i try to play it will either just crash the game, or give me another blue screen telling me about a corrupt system file.

So i am beggining to think it's my hard drive. Ruled everything else out. Anyone have any experience in this department?

I hope this makes sense, and thank you in advance.
 
What error message do you get on the BSOD?

If you don't remember, take a look in the system log, there might be some error messages there.

What kind of memory do you have?

It could be the nforce4 chipset. The Nvidia driver for the IDE/SATA controllers is poor. The one shipped with windows is better.
 
What error message do you get on the BSOD?

If you don't remember, take a look in the system log, there might be some error messages there.

What kind of memory do you have?

It could be the nforce4 chipset. The Nvidia driver for the IDE/SATA controllers is poor. The one shipped with windows is better.
Click to expand...

Not sure the exact messages but it's always one of the two...

File (SomeRandomFile) is corrupt try running chkdsk

or

blah blah blah Disable cachable bios and memory shadowing.


I have 1gb of Kingston 400mhz DDR PC3200

And how can i install new sata controllers when i can't even get windows to install.
 
What error message do you get on the BSOD?

If you don't remember, take a look in the system log, there might be some error messages there.

What kind of memory do you have?

It could be the nforce4 chipset. The Nvidia driver for the IDE/SATA controllers is poor. The one shipped with windows is better.
Click to expand...

Not sure the exact messages but it's always one of the two...

File (SomeRandomFile) is corrupt try running chkdsk

or

blah blah blah Disable cachable bios and memory shadowing.


I have 1gb of Kingston 400mhz DDR PC3200

And how can i install new sata controllers when i can't even get windows to install.

Boot up in "safe mode". If the system is stable in safe mode then you probably have a driver problem. Then you can remove the driver from nvidia.

It's a common problem with nforce4 chipsets. Especially on some Abit motherboards.
 
Check in the start up screen if it detects your HDD as SATA?
Looks like Maxtor have some problems. Try a firmware upgrade.
Also try plugging your hdd to a different SATA port in t he mobo or try changing the hdd jumper settings.
 
This may sound silly - but I have had it resolve 3 systems that did EXACTLY the same thing.

Change the SATA cable.

The ones that are being shipped with some motherboards ... well... suck.

The drive manufacturers' cables are better, but still not great. Third party $ ones are a big difference if you can wait for the order to come in. Go find some at a local electronics store, or find a different spare from a friend w/ a differnt MB. They are so sweet and easy to work with - but the connectors are NOT as tight as they should have been designed and they wind up moving and create TONS of BSD errors, and data corruption.

"can it be that simple?"

I am here to say "yes"

Hope this helps,

Joe
 
i have similar issues with my western digital 120g sata hdd. it was working great for almost a year, then it just started having problems. intermittent lockups on computer startup, lockups while in windows, lockups while accessing anything on the drive. eventually i just unplugged it and forgot about it for awhile. just last month when i upgraded all my internal components, i decided to give it another shot. i was able to get the sata drive going with no problems at all, until 2-3 days later and it started showing the same symptoms as last time so i again disconnected it. i was thinking that it was originally my motherboard or drivers that caused the initial problems, but when they happened again on my new setup i came to the conclusion that its my hdd. however i still have my doubts, because it was working no problem for those first few days. anyone have any thoughts?

original components:
athlon xp 3000
asus a7n8x-e deluxe
mushkin 512mb
corsair 512mb
radeon 9600


new components:
athlon x2 3800
abit kn8 nf4
geil 2x512mb
radeon x700 pro
 
Is your system on 24/7? If so could be heat buildup if there's no airflow or it's constricted in the case.

If not I have no idea, sorry.

One thing to try is go to WD's website and download their disk diagnostics. Give it a go on that drive (I'd try both when its showing symptoms and when it's 'fresh') and see if that shows any problems.

Mike.
 
Is your system on 24/7? If so could be heat buildup if there's no airflow or it's constricted in the case.

If not I have no idea, sorry.

One thing to try is go to WD's website and download their disk diagnostics. Give it a go on that drive (I'd try both when its showing symptoms and when it's 'fresh') and see if that shows any problems.

Mike.
 
Hi,

I HAD this exact same problem on two different computers. They were crashing, on average, three to six times a day. After a lengthy process of elimination I determined it had to be the SATA hard drives. BTW: I ruled out viruses, spyware and driver issues right at the outset. As grateful as I was to know what needed to be fixed (again) the answer still bugged me. I had already replaced the original SATA drives (which had been suffering from the same problem) a few months earlier and yet here it was back again.

I am not much of a conspiracy thinker but I have come to believe there is a lot more going on under the hood in the move from SATA I to SATA II than a bump in performance.

Before I finally solved the problem I was honked enough that I reinstalled my trusty EIDE drives and rebuilt the first machine... but the performance difference between EIDE and SATA was SO noticeable I kept thinking there must be a better way... so I started to dig.

As much as I hope not, what I am about to say may sound like a commercial to you but I assure you that's not my intent. Long story short. I found a one of a kind hard drive utility package called SpinRite by Gibson Research. The url is something like grc.com and so far as I can determine only they do what they do... and they've been doing it for the last sixteen years.

At that point I vaguely remembered that a friend had recommended this software to me YEARS ago. I hummed and haw-ed over the price for a day or two but finally ponied up the cash and I'm glad I did. I restored my last known good backup on the drive giving me trouble (courtesy of Acronis True Image, another great piece of code) and fired up SpinRite from a bootable CD in DOS mode. It ran for almost a day but I haven't had a single reoccurance of the problem since (and it's been a good couple weeks now).

Hope this helps
 
i have similar issues with my western digital 120g sata hdd. it was working great for almost a year, then it just started having problems. intermittent lockups on computer startup, lockups while in windows, lockups while accessing anything on the drive. eventually i just unplugged it and forgot about it for awhile. just last month when i upgraded all my internal components, i decided to give it another shot. i was able to get the sata drive going with no problems at all, until 2-3 days later and it started showing the same symptoms as last time so i again disconnected it. i was thinking that it was originally my motherboard or drivers that caused the initial problems, but when they happened again on my new setup i came to the conclusion that its my hdd. however i still have my doubts, because it was working no problem for those first few days. anyone have any thoughts?

original components:
athlon xp 3000
asus a7n8x-e deluxe
mushkin 512mb
corsair 512mb
radeon 9600


new components:
athlon x2 3800
abit kn8 nf4
geil 2x512mb
radeon x700 pro
Click to expand...

i had the same problem with some old sata drives in raid 0 which amplified the problem but i found the the old sata cables where coming loose.
I found it out in a similar way you did when i got a new graphics card that was much longer than the old on and it sort of held the sata cable in for me.no problems with the drive since.
 
I had similar problems and still trying to determine if my drives are bad or if I have another issue.

I had two WD 120gb Sata drives in a system in a Raid 1 config that just starting acting up and now I can't boot into Windows. Safe Mode or anything. System will not even recognize the drives. I then tried to install a brand new WD 120gb SATA drive in the system and install Windows on that but got same messages with that and wouldn't recognize the drive.

Original specs:
Athlon XP 2500+
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
2 512 gb Corsair value select
nvidia FX5700
Antec Sonata case with 380 watt PSU

I though it may be the motherboard so installed an Abit KV7 in the case but still had the same problems problems with all three drives. System just won't recognize the drives. I then installed an IDE drive in the system and it was recognized and booted up fine.

I just don't know now if the SATA drives are all bad. I'm trying to recover some data on the drives that were in the Raid 1 config.

The common denominator seems to be the case in both situations. I though it may be the "SATA-ready" Antec PSU somehow screwed up the sata but haven't had a chance to try the drives in another case or change out the PSU.

Any advice.

Appreciate any help..

Bob
 
I've just come to this thread looking for answers as to why a home built new machine won't recognise drives in dos -

asus p4s800d-x
intel 2.4
2x sata
nvidia
500w power

it sounds like sata is very twitchy..?

I can get into the raid functions and get them up and running but cannot see them in DOS.
 
my system occassionally runs 24/7, but maybe only a couple times a month. i am using the sata cables that came with the motherboard. i've read that theres a possibility of the cables being bad, so i'll purchase a couple 3rd party cables and see how that goes. also, i dont think its the cables that coming lose, as someone pointed out earlier. i have tried pulling the cables out without releasing the clamps, and the cables will not budge. i've unplugged and replugged numerous times when the drive shows symptoms of failure, making sure that they are snuggly in place. well, im off to try some more troubleshooting and suggestions.
 
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