- Jan 14, 2022
- 5
- 0
- 1,510
I fitted a SSD to my PC around 18 months ago, and since then it has been experiencing a very infrequent issue (once every 3-4 months), where Windows 10 will completely freeze (mouse, everything), and when I restart the PC it displays a black screen with "A disk read error occurred". Online articles seem to suggest that the disk has died, but I always find that the problem disappears after 4 or 5 restarts, and the PC is absolutely fine again (until next time). Occasionally we'll see a BSOD rather than Windows just freezing, but I can't recall the specific error message.
It's so infrequent that it's hard to spot a pattern as to when it occurs. I can say that it only ever happens when my daughter is playing Sims 4, which she plays for an hour or two most evenings. This is the only time the h/w is "pushed" at all. The PC isn't used for any other gaming, and the rest of the time it is used for "light duties" - mainly me working from home during the day over RDP, so the PC is on for 10+ hours per day, to put the infrequency of these crashes into context.
The latest crash was last night, and looking at Windows event viewer immediately before the crash, I can see quite a few errors over the space of 10-15 seconds, mainly a mix of
"The IO operation at logical block address 0x0..... for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP1T0L0-2) was retried"
and
"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1"
Could these crashes be a sign that the SSD is starting to fail? It feels like problems would be more frequent if this was the cause.
Could loose/bad SATA cables produce these symptoms? Again it feels like the problem would be more frequent. As a precaution I'm going to order some new cables tonight, as that's a cheap and easy fix to try.
Can SSDs overheat? Given that it only happens when the Sims is running, then eventually starts working again after a few minutes, my gut tells me that it could be heat. Having said this, the case does have good ventilation with front and back fans, and I don't imagine that the Sims will be pushing the hardware to its limits! The SSD does sit in the bottom of the case underneath a HDD, so perhaps the air isn't circulating very well down there, so I can try moving it to see if that helps. Are there any Windows utilities to report disk temps, and if so what is a "normal" range?
It's an infrequent but frustrating issue, especially as my daughter is autistic, so when the PC crashes it triggers anxieties and worries about losing everything on the PC!
It's so infrequent that it's hard to spot a pattern as to when it occurs. I can say that it only ever happens when my daughter is playing Sims 4, which she plays for an hour or two most evenings. This is the only time the h/w is "pushed" at all. The PC isn't used for any other gaming, and the rest of the time it is used for "light duties" - mainly me working from home during the day over RDP, so the PC is on for 10+ hours per day, to put the infrequency of these crashes into context.
The latest crash was last night, and looking at Windows event viewer immediately before the crash, I can see quite a few errors over the space of 10-15 seconds, mainly a mix of
"The IO operation at logical block address 0x0..... for Disk 0 (PDO name: \Device\Ide\IdeDeviceP1T0L0-2) was retried"
and
"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1"
Could these crashes be a sign that the SSD is starting to fail? It feels like problems would be more frequent if this was the cause.
Could loose/bad SATA cables produce these symptoms? Again it feels like the problem would be more frequent. As a precaution I'm going to order some new cables tonight, as that's a cheap and easy fix to try.
Can SSDs overheat? Given that it only happens when the Sims is running, then eventually starts working again after a few minutes, my gut tells me that it could be heat. Having said this, the case does have good ventilation with front and back fans, and I don't imagine that the Sims will be pushing the hardware to its limits! The SSD does sit in the bottom of the case underneath a HDD, so perhaps the air isn't circulating very well down there, so I can try moving it to see if that helps. Are there any Windows utilities to report disk temps, and if so what is a "normal" range?
It's an infrequent but frustrating issue, especially as my daughter is autistic, so when the PC crashes it triggers anxieties and worries about losing everything on the PC!
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