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PC issues

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Pivo504

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
3,381
Built this PC gigabyte UD p55A UD 3 with intel 1156 chipset i5 750 quad core @3.8 with 8gig memory GSkill stock timings, asus 660GTX, samsung 830 128gig SSD drive plus 2 80 gig 7200 sata drives backup, 1 backup 500 gig drive, XFX 650 PSU, audigy 2, with Cogage Arrow CPU Cooler in 2010 & recently had strange issue. I scanned a document & moved it to one of my older hard drives (80gig 7200 sata drive). I get a loading icon & the PC hangs...it never gets out of the loading phase so I decide to try & restart but that doesnt help bc I cant get to the restart under windows. So I just use the shutdown button. Now I go restart & my PC does not recognize any drives...I go into bios & dont see them. I shut down & come back later that day. Now my PC recognizes all my drives but one of the 2 older sata drives. Under bios it shows the drive is there but it freezes even BIOS when I try to click on it. still cant boot into windows..Now I shut down the PC again & pull out the hard drives to check if the wires are all in place, everything looks ok. I start PC up again windows boots this time but it seems to delay or lag more than usual...now even the drive that didnt show up in BIOS is working...Any idea what might be going on? Is there a way to test the hard drives ?

Appreciate the help
 
What happens when you disconnect all of the older SATA drives from the PC? Does the system work fine then?

You can always use the hard drive manufacturer's software to scan hard drives.
 
Thanks for the response dangman. The system seems to be working fine now "all of the sudden" Is it possible for a faulty drive that does not have windows on it to cause windows to not boot up or these kinds of issues? Is it possible that it could cause even the BIOS to freeze? Ive never had the BIOS freeze on any PC ive built or used....
Is there a program that can look up the manufacturer of the hard drives? The two 80 gig sata drive might be over 10 years old..
 
Yes defective hard drives can cause system instability like the ones you experience. I've seen it happen before. As for looking up the manufacturers, just look in Device Manager.
 
I looked under device manager but it only says "manufacturer: (standard disk drives)
 
thanks for the reply dangman. I dled HDtune & ran the tests for both drives & it came out ok/healthy. All green sectors with no red..So what is the issue then lol
 
You are using an Intel P55 chipset with the Marvell 9128 chip. The P55 chipset doesn't support the full SATA3 6gb/s speed, so they added the Marvell 9128 chip. The Marvell 9128 isn't very good. It has a lot of issues. So, I'd only plug the SSD into the SATA3 slot, or try plugging them all into the SATA2 ports if you can. There's some cheaper PCI-E SATA controllers that are faster you can add (like $15).
 
Everything has been working fine since it was built in 2010 this one issue just popped up...
 
Pivo504 said:
thanks for the reply dangman. I dled HDtune & ran the tests for both drives & it came out ok/healthy. All green sectors with no red..So what is the issue then lol
Click to expand...

You should also check the SMART status of the drives. Hard drives for quite a few years now have been capable of remapping bad sectors to reserved sectors. It's normal for a drive to have a few bad sectors, but if it's starting to fail often a drive will work around/hide the problem for a while by remapping new bad sectors and may look fine after a bad sector scan. I'm not actually sure how to check SMART in Windows. smartctl -H <device> gives you a basic drive health report in Linux, for example smartctl -H /dev/sda.
 
Yea they are pretty old drives...wish I could check the date & actually find out who the manf of them is...Anyone know how to check the SMART status?
 
Pivo504 said:
Yea they are pretty old drives...wish I could check the date & actually find out who the manf of them is...Anyone know how to check the SMART status?
Click to expand...

With the same program I mentioned earlier.....
 
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