Hard drives getting fried

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BritSwedeGuy

New member
I have a recurrent problem that seems to be taking out my SATA drives one by one. Each drive can perform fine for months then the transfer rate drops and drops and drops. I returned the first drive this happened to and was told it was caused by a head crash - I suspect they didn't do a lot of investigation though. (It was a 300Gb Seagate SATA 7200 8MB)

After several months with no problems my C: drive is now screwing up badly, so I'd appreciate some opinions before I stress the credit card again.

My main suspect is the motherboard, but could the PSU be to blame?

Or even the BIOS?

Crucial PC3200 DDR-DIMM 2048MB CL3

Thermaltake Silent Purepower 680W, Dual Fan

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2.2GHz Socket 939 2MB

Asus A8N-SLI Premium

Gainward GeForce 6600GT 128MB GDDR3

Auzentech X-Meridian 7.1 Soundcard
 
Certainly check your 12v rails but I'm not sure whether it would drop low enough to cause HDD problems without the PC shutting off.

Have you checked the hard drives temperature ? Is it the same motherboard as the previous failing HDD?
 
After looking at your rig specs I'd put your #1 culprit as the PSU. However, sometimes hard drives are funny like this. You can get lucky, and you can have the worst luck ever. You may just have a pair of faulty drives, hey, stranger things have been known to happen. So it might not even be a problem caused by your other hardware. If it is, then I would suspect your PSU. If your HD's are be giving intermittent or lower than usual power where the motors are stressing unusually hard it will cause them to wear out MUCH faster. You might try testing your SATA rails w/ a meter.

I don't think it's possible for your motherboard to do any physical damage to the hard drive.
 
I would be extremely supprized if it was u`r psu.

Do u use 1 hard drive ?

Can any1 inform me of how long the waranties are for these things usually ? Crapping out after several months is a very short period of time, maybe a manuf rma atleast would exist. I`d expect 5 years live atleast out of a HD.

I`m thinking along the lines of a bad batch.

Big question tho - when u received the drive, was it sealed in a static bag ?
 
All drives have been Seagate SATAs, different sizes, not on the same line, spread over the last year or so since I built it. Always the same symptoms, transfer rate dropping like a stone.

One big big piece of information I forgot until I went through my order history - it's not the same mobo as when it first happened, so that points the finger at the PSU I would have thought - which is less of a pain to replace than the mobo! One of the knackered drives is still connected and, other than running slow, still seems to be working fine.

I'll run HDtach (if the system will stay up long enough) and post again.
 
Unplug all other optical drives and anything else on the 12v rail and try it. It's unlikely to be over worked but they may have some effect.

Do you have a Multimeter ?
 
name='BritSwedeGuy' said:
All drives have been Seagate SATAs, different sizes, not on the same line, spread over the last year or so since I built it. Always the same symptoms, transfer rate dropping like a stone.

One big big piece of information I forgot until I went through my order history - it's not the same mobo as when it first happened, so that points the finger at the PSU I would have thought - which is less of a pain to replace than the mobo! One of the knackered drives is still connected and, other than running slow, still seems to be working fine.

I'll run HDtach (if the system will stay up long enough) and post again.
Click to expand...

I returned a 200g Seagate last month, writing was at about 600k, reading was fine, on return the fault was substanciated.
 
HDtach results (after many boot attampts)

C ST3200 10.9 MB/s

D WD2500 250 MB/s

E ST3300 11.1 MB/s

Sorry, not all are Seagates as I said, the surviving drive is a Western Digital-, probably just lucky there.
 
name='Ham' said:
Deffinatly check your PSU. My seasonic assassinated 2 HDDs in the space of an hour
Click to expand...

If it were his psu, wouldn`t he perform a good test by merely changing over the molex connectors between c,d,e - and see if HDTach does the same ?

I find it very co-incidental that C & E are performing so bad.
 
name='Rastalovich' said:
If it were his psu, wouldn`t he perform a good test by merely changing over the molex connectors between c,d,e - and see if HDTach does the same ?

I find it very co-incidental that C & E are performing so bad.
Click to expand...

I see where your comming from but no. As the 12v rail suppling the molexs is still going too be the same.

I agree that it looks like HDDs failing, but i wouldn't trust a TT psu as far as i could throw it.
 
Could he compensate by losing 50w somewhere else ?

Disconnect one of the drives altogether and the optical, maybe a fan or 2.

What is it - about 25w a drive, around the same for an optical, fans are pffft 2.5-5.

Thing is tho, as u say, if it`s the quality of the 12v rail.. I guess if the WD could be "better built" it may be compensating itself internally.
 
He could try compensating yeah, but it depends on (if it was the psu) what the problem is. I doubt it would be overdrawing, but just another fault. Id recommend try a totally different PSU that you know is 100%

Tbh its just something too check too make sure its not the drives, which as you say it most likely is :/.
 
Agreed with the PSU idea. How anyone can say something is definately NOT a PSU is beyond me. Bad power can go to any part of the system and affect any component.
 
I think I've had drives fail on each connection and thinking about it I seem to remember Asus's monitor kicking up alarms about voltage spikes every so often *kicks self*

I've ordered an Akasa Paxpower 80+ 500W Ultra Quiet PSU (as well as a 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATAII NCQ 3Gb/s 400GB 16MB cache) so my wallet is hoping that'll fix it!

Again, many thanks :worship:
 
U bought both a replacement psu and drives ?

hmmm, I really hope the issue is gone when u set it all up.

I`ve found ASUS`s monitor thing to be over reactive tbh. The settings it uses for it`s alarms can be changed %age wize, depending on the monitor perhaps.
 
GAH! Looks like the PSU I bought (Akasa Paxpower 80+ 500W Ultra Quiet PSU) isn't suitable - there's a 3 pin connection** on the motherboard that it doesn't have a plug for. Bloody annoying and I don't know what PSU is suitable.

Does this make sense?

**The mystery connection on my old PSU can been seen here, it doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere.

http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/176/Purepower2.JPG

It has the black and yellow wires.

Could it just be a PSU fan speed sensor? (Hopes...)

Must have been, all seems okay with new PSU.
 
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