System freezes during games, hard drives dies, etc -- ongoing issue for a year

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dave247

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Oct 10, 2010
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ok I am trying to find the root problem which is causing other gradual issues with my system over time.

Basically, I built this system (specs in my sig) and I would run two cheap Seagate hard drives in raid 0 configuration for faster performance. For the most part everything would be fast and stable but then Windows 7 (64-bit) would eventually freeze up, I would get blue screen, then I might sometimes be able to reboot and run normally again, but eventually it would freeze again, and ultimately I would lose a hard drive (it would become slow and eventually stop being detected by windows and/or my motherboard).

After researching and asking questions, I learned that what's happening is that my drives would sometimes drop out of raid for whatever reason, thus causing a SMART error... Also, usually the first hard drive in the raid 0 configuration would eventually die, and I would have to replace it. I have gone through several sets of Seagate hard drives and I have switched around between using the ICH10R and JMircon controllers -- Yes I know now that I shouldn't ever use the JMicron ones. So I switched back to Intel controllers for my drives.

I have finally stopped using my raid 0 configuration because of the consistent errors I get with the drives while running it and now I just use one drive.

Ok now this is what happens most of the time: I usually am playing Call of Duty MW2 when my pc will freeze up and either sit there with a frozen image on the screen, or blue screen, then I will either have to delete my raid volume and reinstall Windows, or I will have to replace a hard drive for the volume.

My latest set-up is that I bought a 250 GB Western Digital Caviar Blue WD2500AAJS. I wanted to stop using Seagate drives and just use WD.

I reinstalled Windows 7 64bit as well as MW2 on the new drive and have been using it fine for about two weeks..... and just now my system froze up, I rebooted, got blue screen and now my motherboard is not even seeing the drive. Well, sometimes it does, but I get "system disk error".

One other thing: My DVD-RW drive also just stopped being detected by my motherboard about a week ago. It still opens, but I can't use it. I've switched SATA ports but to no avail.



All this has been happening to me for about a year and a half now. I'm at the point where I'm starting to question weather it's my motherboard or maybe my PSU.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing these issues? I mean, I understand that the problems with my raid 0 was that my drives were not very good quality, not meant for running long term stable raid 0 volume. But now that I have had a single drive running, I get the same problem eventually.....

I just find it hard to believe that it could be my PSU since it's a relatively nice one and these problems dont seem to stem from not having enough power. My PSU is 850 watts and SLI ready and I'm only using a few hard drives in the case. I also don't overclock (except the dummy overclock in the BIOS) so that can't be the problem.

If it's my motherboard, how the hell could that cause my drives to break? It seems like the board should just stop functioning all together and stop working with ANY drives. Unless this stems from very problematic SATA controllers which screw up the drives over time...

And I don't think it would be just the individual hard drives since I have gone through about eight of them in the course of two years. This is not normal.


BTW: my system BIOS has been upgraded a few times and I have had this problem before and after doing any firmware updates on any of my hardware components.

Alright, so I think that's about it. I hope I have been clear about my long term problem and that someone can help me... please... I'm so fed up with my system
 
It is not out of the question for motherboards to corrupt hard drives.

However, did you actually test your "failed" drives in another PC to make sure that they're actually working?
 
What are your temps?

My parents old computer displayed similar problems as if would just freeze up and BSOD'ed. Upon restart would show that there is supposedly a HDD problem. I realized only after a while that the CPU was overheating and causing all this and not the HDD.
 
I havent tested my hard drives in another pc... i dont have another sata motherboard. I think a few of the drives might still work, but the rest of them completely stopped functioning. i ran hdd diagnostics on the ones that i could and got errors.

i dont think temperature is an issue, and it's crossed my mind... i have a few fans and there isnt too much hot air coming out of my case... i can't see the temperature led on my mobo anymore since i put in a second video card, lol...

oh well. i am getting an rma for my board.
 
thanks.. i will post results. btw should i be worried about evga rma process?
 
I had a really similar problem not too long ago:

It seems one of my SATA ports in my mobo is not working properly. Obviously, when you have 6 ports and use just a few of them (not including the broken one) everything seems fine...but when you plugged a device into that SATA, the problems started: freezing issues. Sometimes, in a random patern, que system would freeze, to come back some time ago...but sometimes it wouldn't. I can tell you how hilarious it becomes when it works flawlessly in a hole month and then in a week you just can't even boot the damn computer (the systems doesn not found the device in the bios...sometimes it did but didn't boot, etc).

In the end I found out that one header was dead. So, you may have a problem with your SATA controller which is causing all your headaches...
 
I know this is a really really late reply. But a while back I finally discovered the source of all my problems: FUCKING SATA CABLES.

Yes, all my problems with raid 0, "problematic" hard drives and motherboard issue were all due to the shitty SATA cables I got with my motherboard way back when I first got it. I've recently bought quality shielded cables and have had no more issues with my OS or gaming or anything. It's just remarkable that so many problems can come from something so seemingly insignificant.
 
Ouch.

Goes to show that even the little things in a PC can do some damage.
 
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