File Transfer Between Hard Drives Causes Computer Crash

[John G.]

Hey guys,

I recently installed a new drive into my storage server (one of WD's 1TB green drives) and transferring files to it sometimes results in a computer crash. There were no issues before this latest drive was installed. Crashes have as of yet only happen when this drive is being written to, though I do not write to the other drives often so I am not sure at this point. Crashes happen MUCH more frequently when there is increased disk activity ANYWHERE else in the system.

The system is built as follows:

AMD Athlon X2 4050e 2.1GHz Dual Core CPU
JetWay JNC62K w/ NVIDIA GeForce 8200 Mainboard
OS Hard Drive: HITACHI Travelstar 5K160 ATA-6
Storage Drives: 3x1GB WD10EADS SATA
Windows XP MCE w/ SP3

Any suggestions where I should start troubleshooting? Does this sound like a problem you've heard before? I've run SMART diagnostics on all the hard drives running WD's diag tools, and it's all come back just fine.

 

[Yoda4561]

Could be anything. I've had file transfer crashes that I've traced from bad hard drives to overclocking, even a bad video card Figure that one out Double check all power connections inside the computer, try to transfer to the drive from another form of media, like an external hdd or dvd-rom/USB stick. Use a different sata port. Are you using the default windows driver for the storage controller or nvidia chipset drivers?

 

[Phoenix '97]

This happens to me when I transfer data at a high rate (i.e., >20MB/sec or so) from a source to my WD10EACS which acts as an OS drive. Though I have 3 other greens (ACS) in my system, another 1TB, 750GB, and 500GB, this is the only drive that causes me problems. I get a BSOD. Heavy reading from the drive (i.e., loading the OS or other programs) doesn't make it crash. It doesn't happen right away though, perhaps after 30-60 seconds. You could try a utility like SuperCopier to limit file transfer speeds.

 

[John G.]

This happens to me when I transfer data at a high rate (i.e., >20MB/sec or so) from a source to my WD10EACS which acts as an OS drive. Though I have 3 other greens (ACS) in my system, another 1TB, 750GB, and 500GB, this is the only drive that causes me problems. I get a BSOD. Heavy reading from the drive (i.e., loading the OS or other programs) doesn't make it crash. It doesn't happen right away though, perhaps after 30-60 seconds. You could try a utility like SuperCopier to limit file transfer speeds.

This sounds like my problem exactly. Have you found anyone documenting it elsewhere on the internet? Should I RMA the drive?

 

[zandor]

This sounds like some sort of really obscure bug causing system crashes. It could very well only come up when you mix that particular drive with certain controllers, drivers, etc., or as Yoda mentioned it could be just about anything.

Full system specs would be helpful in figuring this one out.
What board, chipset, drive model (#), bios version, drive firmware version, and SATA driver version are you guys running?

As for RMAing the drive, if you can send it back & get a different model I'd be tempted to do that. Sometimes it's worth a restocking fee & shipping charges to avoid debugging this sort of crap.

 

[Phoenix '97]

One solution I've read on the OCZ forums for solving data transfer-related crashes was to increase the southbridge voltage just slightly. Come to think of it, it was when I was transferring from my OCZ Core V1 to the WD10EACS when the crash occurred. Although it's probably on a totally different chipset, I have an Asus P5Q-E with an ICH10.