[SOLVED] Strange Asus Z87 Pro Sata Problem .. Need Help!

ljay880

Distinguished
Oct 1, 2009
31
0
18,530
I have an Asus z87 Pro MOBO that has all 6 Intel Sata Ports being used. The board has 8 total ports, 6 Intel (yellow) and 2 Asmedia (brown). One is an SSD and the other are all HDDs. Everything was stable for years and the machine boots in around 5 seconds. I began to run low on space so I picked up a WD 8TB Red and added it to one of the Asmedia ports. I boot the machine and noticed it took about a minute to boot, which is markedly longer than the normal 5 seconds. When it finally boots, things are a bit laggy, like opening windows explorer takes a bit to load all the hard drives and even longer to click into each one. I see the new WD drive and I initialize / format it to NTFS, and name it. I run a short test which it passes, and then begin an extended test. While doing that I was transferring stuff around the other hard drives and the speed simply dropped to around 3 Megs / sec. The system then got really slow so I rebooted. This time it took 5 minutes to come back up. When it did, two of the drives are not present, though the new WD is. Disk Mgmt took like 3-5 minutes to load and showed two drives as not initialized / formatted. I launched my Disk checking software and one of them that was missing, popped back up in tact, but is painfully slow to respond. I rebooted a few times each time seeming to take longer than the last. The one drive never came back, even after disconnecting the new WD drive and the system is almost unusable. I don't know what happened, and with the change (new HD) disconnected, the problem is still present. I was hoping to get use of the old drive ( I need the data). I even did a system restore, but it still takes 5 minutes just to get into windows, another 3-5 minutes before windows explorer loads all it can, and my old drive is still not accessible.
 
Solution
1) Did you use win10 or something else?

2) Because you had the 8TB, you should try to format the drive into the GTP format, if you use the win10.

3) Do you try connect the 8TB into the intel sata port?

And recommend to disconnect all other HDDs first, only the boot drive (SSD) with the 8TB HDD, when you do the troubleshooting, in case you mess up other HDDs and you will lose all the files/data.
1) Did you use win10 or something else?

2) Because you had the 8TB, you should try to format the drive into the GTP format, if you use the win10.

3) Do you try connect the 8TB into the intel sata port?

And recommend to disconnect all other HDDs first, only the boot drive (SSD) with the 8TB HDD, when you do the troubleshooting, in case you mess up other HDDs and you will lose all the files/data.
 
Solution

ljay880

Distinguished
Oct 1, 2009
31
0
18,530
Cin19, I followed your advice and with everything unplugged but the Boot drive, the PC fired up perfectly without issue. I then plugged drives back in one at a time, booting after each, and sure enough, when I got to one of my Old Toshiba 4TB drives, back to the problems ... though it was only around 3 years old which seems way too early to die. I removed that drive and plugged the rest of them all in, and everything works fine. One strange thing I noticed however, is that It takes about twice the time to boot. It used to be about 10 seconds and it is now around 23 seconds. Not sure why this would be, but it still acceptable for how infrequently I reboot the machine. Does it have anything to do with the WD Red 8TB being a 5400 RPM drive, when all others are SSD or 7200? It also is very strange that an existing drive failed, at the exact same time I added a new drive. The server hadn't been powered down in about 3 months and maybe it was just waiting to die? Any thoughts on that coincidence? Thanks for the advice Cin19!
 
Download and Install Hard Disk Sentinel This will let you know about the longevity of your drives and what state they are in.
I have a similar system with 10 HDs on an ASRock Extreme 6.1 Z97 - changing drives screwed me over, but it did turn out to be a bad Sata cable.
 
I will say the Old Toshiba 4TB may have problem, like other member said use software to check the drive S.M.A.R.T, if it has problem. It is going to die, don't matter 3 yr, one yr. Some of them maybe DOA ( Dead on arrival ). So you should copy or backup the data first, if you can. Then check when you bought it, because Toshiba has 3 yr warranty, but it depends on what model you had. If it is under warranty, request the warranty. https://storage.toshiba.com/consumer-hdd/support/warranty-info

How to see if your HDD is dying with SMART. https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/how-to-see-if-your-hard-drive-is-dying/
 

ljay880

Distinguished
Oct 1, 2009
31
0
18,530
After some time to actually do more testing ... turns out both of those 4TB Toshiba drives are ready for the breakers yard! I hooked the problem drive to an external sata/power cable --> USB 3 and it appears as uninitialized / un-formatted space, but all attests fail. Furthermore, I installed some disk recovery software and every block was reported bad ... would this be a head crash? I also installed Hard Disk Sentinel as suggested above. My two oldest HGST drives show 90% health (and they were older than the Toshiba drives by at least 2 years) and the second 4TB Toshiba shows 10% Health ... so strange I bought them about the same time, and they are both failed/ on the cusp of failing at the same time ... is that normal behavior? I am really ticked that the Toshiba drives failed so young ... They were only ever wrote to once, and each file accessed 1-5 times ... although they were in an Always On environment. I have a 6 TB Toshiba in there as well, and I wonder how long I can count on that drive now. I don''t buy Seagate drives as I've had those fail so many times over the years. I've never had any other brand die until now. Is a 90% health report on my HGST drives something to worry about ? Also, why would having that failed drive cause the sstem to basically become unusable as it slowed down to a crawl ? Thanks everyone for all the help and suggestions so far!