HDD occasionally disconnects while on

Heatproofsean · 30 May 2012 at 23:35

2 different hdd in 2 different SATA ports have now "crashed". They stop working and appear to of disconnected from the pc. Restarting doesnt usually fix it. But shutting down waiting a few moments then booting up usually does.

Could this be the infamous SATA port problem with my motherboard? The drives only have program files on. When my first drive (D:/) started failing I moved my regular programs onto a spare, unused HDD (Y:/). But now that has the same symptoms.

I should also mention, I had 2 blue cold cathode tubes hooked up, and when i replaced the D:/ SATA Cable and booted up, the cable for lights heated up and melted the plastic covers around it. I turned it off quickly, checked for other cable damage and removed them both from the system.

can anyone offer some troubleshooting tips? system specs are below in my Sig.

Surveyor · 30 May 2012 at 23:49

Didn't you swap your board for a B3 revision?

Swap the HDDs onto the Intel SATA 3 ports on the motherboard (the white ones).

If the problem goes away then it seems you have experienced the chipset failure.

Heatproofsean · 31 May 2012 at 00:03

No i didn't :/ Can I still do this? how would I check if it is the USB 2.0 ports? The disconnects are quite infrequent so i can't really swap ports and test them.

Surveyor · 31 May 2012 at 00:12

Whether you can still swap or not on a voluntary basis is probably down to Gigabyte and/or your retailer.

The exchange programme funded by Intel closed a long time ago.

Gigabyte are usually quite accommodating so it might be worth getting in touch.

If the board has become faulty then you should get a swap no problem.

I assume you mean SATA 2 not USB 2.0?

I don't know of a way to test the SATA 2 ports.

If you swap them over and have no more problems then you can assume they're faulty.

Heatproofsean · 31 May 2012 at 13:32

Ok i'll give that try and see what happens. Cheers for the help.

Heatproofsean · 3 Jun 2012 at 13:20

Disconnected the other drives and it really started to cause issues and it appears to have stopped. I guess I'll contact Gigabyte and se if they will exchange it.

arknor · 3 Jun 2012 at 13:28

ive had the same **** on a gigabyte board aswell...

theres 2 different sata chips on my board though so i just moved the drive onto the ports for the other controller.

last time i buy a gigabyte board ive had nothing but problems since day one

Heatproofsean · 3 Jun 2012 at 13:34

Should they not exchange it, what would be my best option? SATA expansion cards? I've got 4 HDD sitting next to my PC now. I need at least 2 more in.