New HD woes

[Shooty*]

Morning all,
Just bought a 750gb samsung spinpoint from Scan.
My rig now has 4 HDs: two 300gb maxtors, a 74gb raptor and the samsung.

When I try to transfer large files (2gb plus), or if I try to transfer a file AND explore directories on the drive at the same time, the 750 sometimes "vanishes". Everest still picks it up on the temp sensor, but it vanishes from my computer until reboot, when it appears fine.

3 of the HDs are on the same power cable (the 74, one of the 300s and the 750). Do you think it might be a power issue? the other drives seem OK, and don't have the same problem, but, thinking about it, the system does seem a little sluggish recently.

should I put such a large drive on it's own power cable? I have a 620watt Corsair PSU, it's a sata drive.

[arthurleung]

Would suggest you try changing the SATA cable.
I've a HX450W and half dozen of HDDs per cables (total 12 drives) is not a problem at all.

[Shooty*]

Yikes. OK, you might be onto something. Thank you.

[adam_weisshaupt]

did you have anything else connected to the SATA connector that you hooked up your new 750GB HDD to before [and was that device working ok?] - I have the same issue of "drive vanishing" with a cheap&crap SATA HDD controller card [that will find its way to the bin soon soon soon]. If you haven't upgraded your BIOS in a while then give that a go [this is of course assuming that you are using SATA connectors on your board and not a seperate controller card]. Also: have a look on the HDD manufacturer's website for any firmware updates to your new 750GB HDD.

[Shooty*]

1. Nope. (something else in it)
2. Upgraded recently
3. From the mobo.
4. Samsung don't appear to be that helpful :/

It's weird: when I'm accessing the files, it's fine. When I try to transfer a large file, it says "calculating time", then sometimes it will transfer, and on other occassions, it just freezes, and gives a "drive z cannot be found" message.

All HDs have advanced performance activated (no slow cache writing). I'm thinking of trying a molex power supply instead of the sata one. Or maybe both, just to be sure.

[Shooty*]

Right, have narrows the circumstances down: It mainly goes on teh blink as follows:

Let's say large drive is drive Z. If I am downloading a file onto C, and try to transfer a file from C or another drive to Z, then that's when it goes wrong.

If I try to transfer the file when I am NOT downloading, then normally there is no problem.

How odd... computer not being able to cope with two lots of simulateous writing?

FYI, I have now tried swapping the SATA calbes of some of the drives to see if that makes a difference. Each time windows boots, it reinstalls the samsung drive, and (this is important, I feel) THAT DRIVE ONLY. Not the other 3 drives, which are fine. Some kind of driver instability? I'm running the latest bios for the A8n.

[306maxi]

I've noticed you're overclocking. Have you locked the bus speeds?

[Shooty*]

Um... Yes. No. I don't know.

Help! All I did was alter the FSB of the processor! I've not touched anything else.

[306maxi]

Um... Yes. No. I don't know.

Help! All I did was alter the FSB of the processor! I've not touched anything else.

You need to lock the PCI bus speed. If you just increase the FSB on some motherboards it will automatically overclock other buses on the motherboard and this is bad for the hard drive.

[Shooty*]

Cool. Thank you very much. I shall have a look when I get home. I think, from memory, I may have increased it to 110 from 100, as I assumed it was something to do with the PCI slots, rather than anything drive-related. I'm not sure I have a "lock" option, but an option to change slightly. But I'll check later.

Ta very much.

Edit: Have just remote-controlled my wife through the bios screens, confirming PBI bus at auto. Now at 33.3. PCIe was at 100, which I thought I'd increased.

Will let you know if that fixes it. Bearing in mind that I was OCing the CPU about 25%, I can see how the drives may not like that if they were being forced to act up accordingly.

[Shooty*]

Update: No. Locked the pci at 33.3.

Error still occurs on using two HDs for intense activity simulateously. So the answer is not to do so

Also, just had 2 hours of total panic: Set some disk checking program on a "total scan on reboot" thing last night and it just went apesh1t, pulling a crcdisk.sys freeze. Had to reset all boot stuff with bcdedit.

[ToG]

i don't mean to complain but could you type HDD as HD is now taken as high definition and it's got me confused.

[Shooty*]

Yep, no worried.

[Thorsson]

I see which motherboard you have. That board, especially the early editions, has had an amount of problems (just some boards, mine never had a problem) with NCQ HDDs (although IIRC many of the reported problems were with Maxtor). I suspect that the problem is between the board and the Samsung.

Try undoing the FSB OC and see if it makes any difference (I know theoretically it shouldn't, but always start with the easy things). Then see if you can turn off NCQ on the HDD. The last try is turning off SMART in the BIOS (I know this was given as a fix by some when the problem first occurred).

[Shooty*]

until 2 minutes ago I had never heard of NCQ.
I shall give it a try.