CSI Hard drive - [Solved]

[chakraps]

Hi all,

We have a troublemaker inside our PC and suspicion is on the 500GB WD secondary hard drive.

E2160
Abit IP35-E
2x1GB G.Skill DDR2-800 (passes Memtest)
EVGA 7600GT
Samsung Spinpoint HD161HJ 160GB - seems okay
WD Caviar WD5000AAKS 500GB - is who I suspect
Antec Earthwatts EA380
Windows XP Pro SP3 x86

symptoms:
- copying/moving large 700MB+ media files between partitions in the WD or from the WD to spinpoint disk causes system hang and automatic restart after couple of minutes.
- Avira antivir scans on WD partitions sometimes cause similar hang and restart.
- Samsung is the primary system and data disk. Whenever access is restricted to Samsung no problems occur.
- Running defrag on WD partitions cause hang and restart.
- surprisingly am able to play the media files stored in the WD drive using VLC player with no issues so far. It's only the other kinds of accesses to the disk that seem to cause problems.
- [EDIT] running md5sum on copies of the same 700MB+ files takes seconds in Spinpoint while it takes forever or sometimes hangs and restarts in the WD drive.

I was wondering how to go about unravelling this mystery?

Thank you people.

 

[hclarkjr]

you need to disable restart on error and see what error is being generated. then go from there

 

[evilbix]

Download ultimate boot cd, and run the drive fitness test from there. It is a good utility that only takes a few hours and won't cost a dime. If it fails just do a backup to a new hdd.

My guess is that your hdd is on it's last leg.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

 

[chakraps]

^Thanks hclarkjr evilbix for the tips. Disabling auto restart seems to have no effect on the hang and restart routine. However error information was logged in the Event Log. I found a bunch of the following errors/warnings.

EventID 11: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk1\D
EventID 5: A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort3
EventID 51: An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk1\D during a paging operation

and a lone

EventID 9: The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort3, did not respond within the timeout period

Microsoft help and support center lists probable causes as loose/failing cable. Others could be loose/failing disk controller, failing disk. I got a spare sata cable and will start with that first. If that doesn't help will try the ultimate boot cd after it finishes downloading.

Thanks again for the suggestions. will post what I find.

 

[chakraps]

Fixed. Indeed, it was the bad sata cable. Switched it, tested some and things look good. Could always rely on AT members (and also surprisingly M$ in this case) to save your day.

 

[evilbix]

awesome, glad to hear it was the cheapest fix possible.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: chakraps
Fixed. Indeed, it was the bad sata cable. Switched it, tested some and things look good. Could always rely on AT members (and also surprisingly M$ in this case) to save your day.

With all the errors and time-outs, check that your interface/port is still operating in DMA mode and not PIO mode.