Strange behaviour with HDD

[nevada51]

I recently purchased a brand new PC (Core i7 3820, 32GB RAM, Sabertooth X79, 650W Corsair TX VS PSU).

In the PC I have 4 drives:
Drive 1 - SSD (Corsair Force 3 GS) - Connected to Intel SATA-3 port 0.
Drive 2 - SSD (Corsair Force 3 GS) - Connected to Intel SATA-3 port 1.
Drive 3 - HDD (Seagate ST2000DM) - Connected to Marvell SATA-3 port 0.
Drive 4 - HDD (Seagate ST2000DM) - Connected to Marvell SATA-3 port 1.

The problem came about whilst looking at my Windows 7 boot time (that is, the time where it says 'Starting Windows' until it loads the desktop).

Originally it was taking over 60s, more like 90s. I investigated various Windows-related sites, believing it to be a Windows issue.

On a hunch, I disabled the Marvell controller and my boot time went from 60s to 20s.

I then re-enabled the controller and rebooted just to be sure it wasn't a fluke - back to 60s again.

I then disabled each drive in turn and rebooted.

Drive 3 Disabled - 60s.
Drive 4 Disabled - 20s.

(1 drive was left enabled and 1 was disabled)

I then moved the drives to the Intel SATA-2 controller, the same behaviour was seen as above and have subsequently moved the drives back.

I have checked Seagate's website and there are no new firmware updates for my drive.

Now, here's where things get REALLY odd.

With Drive 4 formatted with a single partition utilising all available space (2TB) - boot speed goes back to 60s.
If I halve the partition size, boot speed goes to around 40s.

To round off my tests, I deleted the drive, removed all partitions and data and we're back to 20s.

Does anyone have any idea as to what this could be or how I might go about fixing this as I'd really like to make use of all of my drives but it's not pivotal (at the moment) if I cannot.

In the meantime, I'm going to use seatools to run tests on both drives, so if I have to return them, I can do so - safe in the knowledge they were faulty.

 

[mouse24]

Hmmm, make sure the hdd is not in the boot order in the bios. Also make sure you are using AHCI in the bios... err... I assume you are using the most up to date controller drivers?

 

[nevada51]

Hmmm, make sure the hdd is not in the boot order in the bios. Also make sure you are using AHCI in the bios... err... I assume you are using the most up to date controller drivers?

Thanks for getting back to me.
I can confirm the only thing in the boot order is the 1st SSD, nothing else is listed (everything else is disabled).

As far as the BIOS is concerned, AHCI is enabled on everything.
All of my drivers are the most up-to-date available.

I'm currently running seatools long-generic test, they passed the short-generic.

 

[mouse24]

Thats weird, maybe it has something to do with 4 drives in general on that board, does unplugging one of the other drives help? Does swapping cables help anything?

Does it happen with say a usb drive plugged in? (if you don't have any don't worry about it)

This is rather weird, Sometimes some drives require extra time to spin up but thats only a couple seconds at most. You might try benchmarking your drive with HDtune.

 

[nevada51]

As it stands, all drives are plugged in but when I add data to the 4th drive, Windows boot (Starting Windows) slows down to a crawl almost.

Unfortunately I'm not in a position to swap cables as the whole PC is cable-managed, so swapping things around is less than simple.

What kind of tests would you suggest?

I'm not certain this is a 'number of drives' issue, but more a fault with drive 4 itself, so far it's failed the long generic test and short drive-self-test with seatools.

I'm about to scan it with HDTune but will benchmark both drives before doing so and will post the results here.

I have a horrible suspicion that the 4th drive will need to be RMA'd or that both drives will need to be replaced or some other horrible amount of replacements.

Wouldn't mind so much but this is all new stuff and I use the PC for my business, so being without it costs me money.

 

[nevada51]

HDTune gives the following results:

Drive 3:
Min - 92.2MB/sec
Max - 198MB/sec
Avg - 158.6MB/sec
Access Time - 11.9ms
Burst Rate - 1338.2MB/sec

Drive 4:
Min - 93.5MB/sec
Max - 203.6MB/sec
Avg - 159.7MB/sec
Access Time - 12.5ms
Burst Rate - 1467.5MB/sec

Note - Drive 3 has data on it, Drive 4 is totally blank.

 

[mouse24]

Well considering it failed both tests I would RMA it as soon as you get a chance, the sooner the better obviously. I am fairly certain you only need to RMA the 4th drive unless you bought them in a pack of two somehow.

I would RMA them before you start requiring the space if the demand for space is that great, instead of using a defective drive and potentially losing it all.

 

[nevada51]

I suspected that might be the case, the drives were fitted in the PC the same time, so it's possible they could be in the 'pack of two' scenario you mention, but only Drive 4 failed the long generic.

I'd be happy to RMA just the 4th drive if I was confident the 3rd drive was good - because the 3rd drive contains my data. This is backed up, but if I lose it, then I have insufficient space on both SSDs to accommodate it.

The only reason I bought 2x 2TB drives was so I had a backup, ironically it looks as if the backup drive itself is where the fault is.

Seagate are a good make and up until now I've rarely, if ever had such strange drive problems.

I'm going to continue with HDTune and see if that comes back with any bad blocks for Drive 4, then will probably run it on Drive 3 just to be certain, regardless of the outcome for Drive 4.

Are there any particular hard drive diagnostics that you'd go for or that you trust more than others?

 

[nevada51]

Finished surface scan with HDTune on Drive 4, no bad blocks, no errors. I really don't know what is going on here.

 

[mouse24]

Hmmm, if your 3rd drive does have problems you can always just ask them to wait until you get the 4th drive to send them the 3rd. Though I doubt there are any problems with the 3rd drive. I'm using a couple of seagate drives aswell in various pcs, I'm just thinkin it was a case of bad luck.

As for tests I trust the most... That would have to be whatever came from the manufacturer for their drive, they would know it better than anyone and what to test for.

I think HirensBootCD has a couple of more indepth hdd testing options if you want to do that while waiting for seagate to approve your RMA notice. (I haven't used hirens boot cd much so I don't know what options are on there, you would have to read through it on their site and see whats what)

 

[nevada51]

Unfortunately I cannot use any dedicated 'repair' CD's or anything that requires the computer to not be in windows.
As I use the PC for my business, I cannot realistically be without it, even to test the drive.

As it stands right now - Drive 4 has some issues. Seagate's own tools confirm this.
At the same time however, it passed the HDTune surface test.
It is currently undergoing a 'within-windows' HDD Regenerator test as I find that to be very thorough and have trusted it in the past.
I'm betting it will find no issues, as the drive will pass the surface scan.

As for Drive 3 - that only failed the short DST, which is enough for me to wonder if it is entirely 'OK' or not, however it's continuing good performance AND the fact it seems to have no issues, suggests to me that it is in-fact perfectly ok.

The irony is - I'm coming from an NVIDIA nForce 680 chipset, with RAID-5. Now I found the hard disks there were solid but the chipset RAID was absolutely horrible, first few years of use it was fine - as it got older, it started to have more and more issues.

Now I have an Intel x79 chipset, not using RAID at all and now - the hard disks are the things that are causing me grief.

Ah well - I expected some problems, but not this - it's not so bad though, I can still use the PC for most of what I need out of it.

Appreciate your input though mouse24, I'll post the results of the scan tomorrow AM when it's due to finish.

 

[nevada51]

HDD Regenerator so far says nothing wrong at all, it's got a few hours still to run though.
For fun and games, I created a single partition on the drive with no data, rebooted - 20s.

So it seems it's not the partition size that causes an issue, it's the amount of data on it - however that suggests my initial observation (where I took the 2TB partition and turned it into 1TB with around 900GB on it), is inaccurate.

I know that with 900GB on the disk and a full-size partition, it made my boot-up take around 60-80s.
I halve the partition size (but delete no data) and it drops to 40-50s.
I delete all the data and partition and it drops again to 20-30s.

I'm going to (once HDD Regenerator has finished) start loading the drive up with data, see if I can repeat the earlier problem, although in any case I think I'm going to RMA the drive, when it fails tests from the mfr's own toolset - I tend to believe it.

 

[mouse24]

Thats really weird, I am at a loss for what to try or even speculate as to what the problem is. I've never encountered anything like this


I realize I might not have asked this but, where does it get stuck at? During POST, window startup/logon/etc?

 

[nevada51]

So, you have BIOS -> Starting Windows -> Logon -> Desktop Appears -> Desktop Useable

It seems to get thoroughly stuck in the 'Starting Windows' part, causing it to sit there for some considerable time, once it's done that part - it just flies ahead as if there isn't an issue, so logon and onward is very quick.

 

[nevada51]

After completely reformatting the drive, loading the data back - for some reason the boot-up is now only slightly slower by a few seconds, rather than 60.

I haven't done anything different and I suspect the drive will still have issues later down the road.
I hate it when things seem to 'fix themselves' when you haven't got a clearly defined cause for the problem in the first place.