HDDs: now you see ‘em, now you don’t

[Fablanta]

Hi Folks,

I’m having a little trouble with my rig and I need some help to fix the problem or at least find out what it is.

When working away in XP drives (and their partitions) will suddenly disappear or initial boot up would hang on the opening screen. On reset the BIOS will hang before the drive lists (no problem after power down). I first suspected a problem when the disk with my Temp, Archives and Music partitions would not show any drives under XP. I suspected PSU problems so I disconnected a SATA drive knocking the count down to 6. It was okay for a few days but then the problems started again and worse, I started hearing the clicks of death so I bought the 750GB to replace it before it was too late. At the same time I replaced my 6800 with an 8600 in order to watch HD movies through my new Xbox360 HD-DVD drive.

This system (with a few minor upgrades) has been working happily since at least last year.

My system comprises:

Abit IP35(-nothing) motherboard
E6420 2.13MHz, overclocked to 2.8MHz with stock cooler
4 x 1GB Geil PC6400 CAS 4
inno3D 6800GT 256MB swapping with XFX 8600GTS (for HDTV)
PCI IDE add-in card (motherboard IDE disabled in BIOS)
2 x 120mm case fans
1 x 90mm case fan
Seasonic S12+ 650W (12v, 4 x 18A; 3.5v/24; 5v/30A)
2 x SATA DVD-RW
4 x 250 – 320GB IDE HDDs
3 x 250 – 750GB SATA HDDs
Thermaltake Armour case (black)

I tried disconnecting drives but I still got boot up issues. Using the Wattage calculator at http://www.extreme.outervision.com/p...ulatorlite.jsp gave me a result of 520W (using 30% for capacitor aging). I downloaded Memtest 86+ 2.01 (dated 21-02-08) and am currently on pass 5 (wall time 5 hrs, 13 mins.) but I will let it run until I get back from work tomorrow evening.

I would be grateful for any suggestions you can give me.

TIA

[BUFF]

what voltage are you running your RAM at?
Have you increased mch voltage at all?
is it only the SATA drives or do the IDE ones disappear as well?

[Fablanta]

what voltage are you running your RAM at?
Have you increased mch voltage at all?
is it only the SATA drives or do the IDE ones disappear as well?

RAM is set at 2.1v but BIOS reports 2.04v (2.1v is the suggested voltage for their 4-4-4-12).

I have not touched MCH at all, it is set to Auto (1.25v) but reported as 1.24v in BIOS.

All four IDE drives attach to the add in card. All drives SATA and IDE are found by the BIOS during power up but restart (using reset or Ctrl+Alt+Del) hangs the PC at "Detecting IDE drives ..."

You made me think of one thing I had not checked. I had changed the SATA cable, changed the drive but not the socket.

Drive's cable moved from S2 to S4 (as reported by BIOS) but XP sees it differently, or rather, not at all. Only 5 drives show up under Disk Management, the new 750GB is absent from the list. Bah.

[BUFF]

try increasing RAM voltage so that abitEQ (or whatever you are using) actually reports 2.1V.
Increase mch voltage a couple of notches (probably to about 1.3 or 1.33V).

[Fablanta]

try increasing RAM voltage so that abitEQ (or whatever you are using) actually reports 2.1V.
Increase mch voltage a couple of notches (probably to about 1.3 or 1.33V).

Sorry for the delay.

DDR2 now at set at 2.24v, reported by BIOS as 2.14v

MCH voltage set at 1.29v, reported by BIOS as 1.31v

The good news is that it did not do any harm.

It booted up as normal but within half an hour the 17 objects under My Computer had fallen to 12.

Another thing I noticed was that under load (Orthos) my CPU temp. went from 39c up to a whopping 60c in just over 18 seconds. The maximum temp for an E6420 is supposed to be 61c. When I initially set up my system I ran Orthos for 24 hours straight without problem.

[da_ging]

do the drives disappear if you knock the over clock off and go back to stock?

[peterb]

The clicking you described could be because of low voltage to the drive. It is more often seen on USB drives where the USB port can't supply enough current - basically the head loads, draws current, the violtage drops and the head unloads - causing the clicvking. If your PSU is overloaded and/or failing, you could get the same effect. That might explain why the drives aren't recognised.

One way to find out is to use a multimeter and monitor the voltage at the drive connectors (easier on an IDE drive as you can put the multimeter probe at the back of the socket while the drive is connected.

What make of PSU is it?

[Fablanta]

do the drives disappear if you knock the over clock off and go back to stock?

It does occasionally boot up at stock speed (according to CPU-Z) when this happens the drive (the week old 750GB) if present tends to disappear with half an hour of boot up.

[da_ging]

the only thing i've found that's made my drives disappear in the past was if the pci or pci-e bus was overclocked but running at stock should fix that unless you still had the pci-e bus overclocked?

is there anything in the system log in event viewer about the drives vanishing?

[Fablanta]

The clicking you described could be because of low voltage to the drive. It is more often seen on USB drives where the USB port can't supply enough current - basically the head loads, draws current, the violtage drops and the head unloads - causing the clicvking. If your PSU is overloaded and/or failing, you could get the same effect. That might explain why the drives aren't recognised.

One way to find out is to use a multimeter and monitor the voltage at the drive connectors (easier on an IDE drive as you can put the multimeter probe at the back of the socket while the drive is connected.

What make of PSU is it?

Thanks for the info. I've never heard that about the ticking.

I'm not too confident about testing the voltage manually. abit EQ tells me that the +12v is an unwavering 12.09v.

My PSU is a Seasonic S12+ 650W. It was bought in May last year for 102 pounds (including delivery). It has a 3 year warranty (don't know if it covers worn out capacitors though).

[BUFF]

which version of BIOS are you running?

[Fablanta]

which version of BIOS are you running?

I am running version 17 of the Abit IP35 BIOS.