Problems with Velociraptor

yannis76 · 3 May 2009 at 16:32

Hi,

maybe you have read my post "sudden problem" in another forum. A month ago, a very annoying problem appeared. Display would froze, then go black and appear again. This would happen every 3-5 seconds and in the end the pc would crash. After looking for various solutions I found out that my velociraptor was full od bad sectors. I replaced the disk and PC worked fine for about a week. Today after shutting down the computer last night, the problem appeared again!!! Now for the last 6 hours I am waiting for chkdsk to complete. So the new velociraptor has bad sectors as well!!!!
Now I am very reluctant to go for a new velociraptor 300 again. Could you please suggest any other fast and reliable sata disk? Maybe SSD?

thank you in advance

miniyazz · 3 May 2009 at 17:02

OCZ Vertexes are highly regarded and are cheaper than Intel's offerings for nearly the same performance. Samsung's 128GB and 256GB are also reportedly very good and somewhat cheaper than the Vertexes, but OCZ's drives can be flashed to upgrade the firmware for better performance and support the TRIM function, which maintains the speed of the SSD over time, which neither the Intels nor the Samsungs have.
The Vertexes are probably the best to go for, but if you're on a (relatively!) tight budget then the Samsungs might be a good compromise.
Any of the SSDs mentioned will give you a substantial boost over velociraptors, even one SSD against two velociraptors in RAID 0, but you obviously have less storage space for the money. They are primarily OS drives; if you need actual storage space too, get an SSD with a regular 7200rpm HDD, if you can afford both.
Read this for a good understanding of SSDs.

DavidB · 3 May 2009 at 17:08

Have you considered that something might be making the hard drive errors?
A bad overclock or faulty RAM can cause those kind of problems. If the same problems have migrated to an entirely different hard drive, then I'd say there's a reasonable chance the problem isn't with the hard drives.

yannis76 · 3 May 2009 at 17:22

DavidB said:
Have you considered that something might be making the hard drive errors?
A bad overclock or faulty RAM can cause those kind of problems. If the same problems have migrated to an entirely different hard drive, then I'd say there's a reasonable chance the problem isn't with the hard drives.

Yes, I also thought that, but I dont know where to search...I dont overclock, memtest 3.4 works fine, Prime 95 works fine (all before the bad sectors). As far the PSU is concerned I don know. Yesterday I was playing HAWX for 2 hours without any problem. Same with CoH last week. But today the problem appeared again. Furthermore why the other disks in the system dont produce such errors (2nd velociraptor 300, western digital 1tb).
The only things I changed before the failure were 3 fans Nexus ultra silent that I connected to the mobo. (the previous were connected to PSU). If there was something else how did the pc worked fine for a week?
If you look in the Internet there are many many reports for bad sectors and veloci.

Please feel free to suggest me anything.

Fire Wizard · 3 May 2009 at 21:08

miniyazz said:
OCZ Vertexes are highly regarded and are cheaper than Intel's offerings for nearly the same performance. Samsung's 128GB and 256GB are also reportedly very good and somewhat cheaper than the Vertexes, but OCZ's drives can be flashed to upgrade the firmware for better performance and support the TRIM function, which maintains the speed of the SSD over time, which neither the Intels nor the Samsungs have.

I would just like to add that Intel haven't yet confirmed either way if they will support the TRIM command on their current range of solid state drives. We will have to wait official word from them.

Once Windows 7 comes out though, solid state drives from then on should support the TRIM command, regardless of the manufacturer.

jbloggs · 3 May 2009 at 21:40

DavidB said:
Have you considered that something might be making the hard drive errors?...

I would recommend you trace the cause of this problem first (before forking out more money on other HDDs), for I find it hard to believe that you have had 2 faulty Velociraptors...

yannis76 · 3 May 2009 at 22:28

jbloggs said:
I would recommend you trace the cause of this problem first (before forking out more money on other HDDs), for I find it hard to believe that you have had 2 faulty Velociraptors...

ok, what would you suggest me to do?
What are the possible causes of the bad sectors?
motherboard? maybe faulty sata slot or cable?
PSU?

If I start to test all these things, I need more money and time just to test the other possibilities. Now I am preparing a spare sata disk to use it as a system disk in the same sata port possibly with the same cable. How can I check the PSU?

jbloggs · 4 May 2009 at 10:41

What are the specs of your comp.?

The things I would look at are, SATA cont., (are chipset drivers installed), power/SATA cables used for HDD (try different ports/cables/HDD (non-velociraptor)), ram, PSU, any relevant settings in BIOS, any errors in Event Viewer...

PhillyDee · 4 May 2009 at 11:31

I hope you RMA'd them and didnt just bin them.

yannis76 · 4 May 2009 at 14:01

jbloggs said:
What are the specs of your comp.?

The things I would look at are, SATA cont., (are chipset drivers installed), power/SATA cables used for HDD (try different ports/cables/HDD (non-velociraptor)), ram, PSU, any relevant settings in BIOS, any errors in Event Viewer...

Hi again!

my PC is a Q6600 non oc, 4GB RAM Kingston DDR2, GTX260, 2x Velociraptor, 1 x Seagate 7200.11 1 TB, Asus P5K-E, Corsair HX620.
Sata drivers were installed fine,
Sata cable WILL be changed and I will use a different PSU cable to the disk as well. Now I have moved my Vista partition to the last working Veloci (the oldest of the 3) and I will move the games to a new disk (WD Black 640GB) which will replace the faulty Veloci. Furthermore I will also change the PSU to a new one Seasonic M12D 750W (overkill IMHO).

This way I might at least throw out of the equation the PSU and the cables. Then its the mobo and the VGA. If I come across to bad sectors for a third time then it will have to do something with the SATA port or the mobo inn general. Bear in mind that the other 2 disks work just fine.