3rd hard disk in a row died

[Unknown Soldier]

Hi KILER,

It seems like your MFT might be damaged. There is a command to fix this I think but can't remember it off hand. Will have a look. Also, it's good practise to make sure your MFT isn't fragmented. Perfectdisk and others can actually defrag MFT so you it.

Secondly, if you have two or more HDD's, it might not be your primary that's giving you hassles but rather the other HDD or even your CD/DVD-Rom/Ram.

Have your checked for the latest drivers for you mobo and the SATA drivers? The manu will usually have this on their website.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/174619
http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=0487

What I always do when I configure a HDD when installing XP is to make 2 partitions. Primary partition of 20-40Gig(I use 20) and the rest as extended. That way if something goes wrong with my OS or I feel XP is slow, I just reformat C: and install windows again without any issues.

Another thing I've heard a friend does (He has a 80gig HDD that he uses for the System), so he creats a ghost image and then formats and runs installs the ghost image. That fixes problems with defragmetation and MFT.

US

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Thanks guys.

I'm going to reformat (write zeroes to my C: ) after my exams are done and my assignment is handed in(23rd this month).

Taping the drive sounds like a good idea.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I've just swapped my SATA controllers and everything seems fine again. Just now (before swapping) I ended up getting the same problem.

So I switched the power connector and SATA link with the other ones and even the HOMM5 campaign maps are working perfectly.

Is my mobo screwed?

 

[ERP]

I've only ever had two problems with HD's

Temperature in the case, causing a failure, this is generally not an issue unless you have little space or really lousy case cooling.

Mounting screws that are too long, I killed 2 drives one after another like this before I realised what killed them. In both cases however the drives were dead before I connected the power and I couldn't even format them.

 

[Otto Dafe]

I've just swapped my SATA controllers and everything seems fine again. Just now (before swapping) I ended up getting the same problem.

So I switched the power connector and SATA link with the other ones and even the HOMM5 campaign maps are working perfectly.

Is my mobo screwed?

Well, have you ruled out the possibility of a bad/loose SATA cable? It sounds like you switched cables at the drives but not at the controller, is that correct? At this point I would make a table with each controller, drive and cable and start marking known good configurations.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I was having this problem, it was my PSU being inadequate, which ended up with my HDD powering on off, giving delayed write failure messages, computer freezing temporarily(20-30seconds), and even creating bad sectors.

2 250gb HDD's in a row...after upgrading my PSU all the problems went away.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

The problem has come back again when I turned on my computer when I woke up (just now) and started Homm5.

I'm definitely going to update my PSU ASAP, if the problem still exists, then the mobo needs replacing.

 

[stevem]

As you've swapped SATA & power cables, I'd suspect the PSU. Get a multimeter & check 3.3V/5V/12V rails for sagging/overshoot under load. Good apps to use would be your problematic game, Prime95, or 3DMark. Even if V is within 5% tolerance under load, your PSU may not be delivering clean power. This requires a CRO to test. Does your PSU have captive SATA power cables or do you use molex adapters? Out of curiosity, grab SpeedFan & see what your HDD temps & SMART attributes are.

Do not discount MFT damage. Use chkdsk /f /x on your boot volume to check. If WinXP doesn't BSOD with ntfs.sys errors, then it should be easily correctable. Try updating your SATA drivers to the latest available. IIRC, the latest versions of SeaTools support NTFS, so run a hardware diagnostic/verification on the drive. Get the CDROM ISO version.

P.S. I don't go for man kisses!

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I will run chkdisk now.
I have attached a file showing voltages, doesn't look too good but I don't have much competence in this area.

I don't have a MM present.

Speedfan:

The overall fitness for this drive is 95%.
The overall performance for this drive is 95%.

Your hard disk is a Maxtor 6B160P0 with firmware BAH41B10.
The average temperature for this hard disk is 37C (MIN=27C MAX=47C) and yours is 34C.

Your hard disk's S.M.A.R.T. attributes are now being analyzed and a full report about the reliability, health and status of your hard disk is generated:
Your hard disk is not below any attribute threshold. This is good.
Your hard disk was never below any attribute threshold. This is good.

The same as last time.



Thanks.

Windows chkdsk (copy pasted from your post into cmd console).

A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
Cleaning up 2 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 2 unused security descriptors.

93771373 KB total disk space.
31751280 KB in 80718 files.
25844 KB in 7802 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
159257 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
61834992 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
23442843 total allocation units on disk.
15458748 allocation units available on disk.

 

[stevem]

Just to clarify. You are specifying drive letter (chkdsk c: /f /x, chkdsk d: /f /x, etc.) for each of your partitions? The SpeedFan output is from a 160GB Maxtor (boot drive?), not your 320GB Seagate. At least the Maxtor's temp is fine & it doesn't appear to have reallocated blocks. MB V readings aren't always accurate, so it's hard to be conclusive from your pic. While you're at it, have a look at the capacitors on your MB. Do any have domed tops or venting?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I'm only using my 320GB Seagate. I have no other drives connected.
I do specify drive letters for my other partitions.

I'll look at my mobo now, from here I cannot see any domed top capacitors but I'll take a closer look after my pizza.
What do you mean by "venting"?

 

[stevem]

Hmm. How did you get this?

Your hard disk is a Maxtor 6B160P0 with firmware BAH41B10.

Cap venting, is discharge of electrolyte. Usually brown or grey crud on top or around the base.

If the problem is specific to Homm5 use, it may be an idea to uninstall it, run chkdsk again, then re-install. It's possible that corrupted data was written when playing the game & now trips up the system.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

The thing is, my system runs fine.
It's only HOMM5 that's behaving like this so far.

I've run another game and it runs fine, no issues. I've run emulators for Saturn and Sega CD/Genesis/MS and they all run fine now.
No problems since last week.

The deviceID is funny I suppose but I know my drive is not 160GB because I'm currently holding more data on it than that.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I've just turned my PC off, had a look around (nothing you've mentioned was found. Capacitors were all nice and flat) and cleaned out the dust in my system.

I turned on my PC and the problem start occuring again, this time not just in HOMM5, also in my emulated games.
I turn off my PC, disocnnect and reconnect my HD and the problem becomes limited to only HOMM5 campaign maps.

Weird.

 

[LonelyMind]

I had this kind of problem once when I connected 3 120mm fans before the HD on the same powercable. The voltage was ok, but after checking with an oscilloscope it turned out that the fans were putting out large amounts of "dirt (ripple)" on the powerline and that caused the HD to haywire, spinning up an down continously.

When I first formatted the drive it behaved normally, so the problem wasn't there all the time. It usually occured when there were large amounts of actuator/seek activity.

I switched to a cable with just another HD on it and no problem after that.

A bad PSU can cause the same problem due to high amounts of ripple, so if you don't have a high quality psu, that is something to check out too.

 

[bloodbob]

Heats a real pain maxtor hard disks certainly like to bake for some reason we had with no extra case fans just the PSU in a air-conditioned cupboard the hard would overheat like very 2 weeks.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

I've put in a fan on the side, it's actually cool-warm to touch under duress, while previously it was hot.
I'm getting a new power supply soon, if it still doesn't fix the problem I will take the disk back to the store, they can run some tests.

If my drive comes back clean, I will buy a new mobo if a new pair of SATA cables don't work.

 

[stevem]

The deviceID is funny I suppose but I know my drive is not 160GB because I'm currently holding more data on it than that.

AFAICR, SpeedFan doesn't read reg entries, but polls the drive directly.

KILER, this has to be your funniest thread in ages. Keep up the quality

IC now.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

There you go.
1 drive.

 

[PeterAce]

An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.

Very much a early sign of Bad Blocks on the HDD.

If you have 100% ruled that out (using tools) then it's usally a disk controller error (controller going bad on motherboard).