Real problem, corruptions and disks inaccessable - eek!

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Joined
6 Sep 2005
Posts
3,781
Hi guys

Hopefully someone can help I'm having real problems with a new system I've built.

The system is:
Intel i7 920
6GB Corsair DDR3
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard
BFG 8800GTX
Enermax PSU
x1 Crucial SSD boot drive
x2 Samsung F3 1TB
X2 1.5TB Western Digital
X4 Samsung F1 1TB
(so many HDDs as it's a video encoding maching as well as an htpc)
Black Gold 3500 TV Card
Windows 7 Pro 64bit

When I boot up everything is fine, but after a while, if I try to access Steam for example which is on my E drive, it may say it is inaccessible.

E drive is fine, but the games folder is apparently corrupted and unable to be accessed. Rebooting fixes this.

Up until now it has been confined to the E drive but now it has thrown up an error on F drive, and now on the G drive (which I am currently doing photoshop work on) and am rather worried as since rebooting I have been greeted with a black screen and it says

"One of your disks need to be checked for consistency. You may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recocer master file table from disk."

The HDD light is constantly on now and it's still at that screen so I guess that's what it's doing...it's been like it for about 15 minutes now.

I have had issues with this system before with drives not being recognised which I put down to the motherboard. Basically all the 10 SATA slots are filled but when it POSTs it doesn't show any HDDs in the last set of drives, says they are empty. They still show up in Windows so I haven't really bothered about it before now.

What I really need to know is:
1. What could be causing either drives or certain folder within drives to become corrupted.

2. How on earth can I fix it?

3. How long is it likely to take to recover this master boot record on a 1.5TB drive? I've got Photoshop work to do tonight :(


Whether it is of any consequence or not I don't know but the drives that corrupt are always on the first set of six SATA ports, the blue ones.
The white SATA ports which I believe have a different controller have always worked fine, none of the 4 1TB F1 drives attached to them have ever had a problem.


Many thanks in advance for any replies.
 
Another quick question...I'm supposing it's trying to recover the master boot record on this drive (not a boot drive)...is it possible to cancel that...the only way possible seems to be reboot it...or do I need to leave it where it is.

May be a daft question but I might need to power off the PC soon and it's been in the same state for about an hour now...how long do you have to give it?
 
It is not the MBR that is corrupt but the MFT, the utility is trying to correct your damaged file table by sychronising it with it's "backup".

I imagine if you turn the PC off before it completes you won't damage anything, though I'd avoid doing so if possible.
 
If you can rule out memory issues and there's no PCIe overclock then I am going to go out on a limb and say it's the SATA. I'm guessing it could be faulty or there could be power issues with having all the ports in use at once. There's no mention of any issues in the BIOS updates, but saying that if there were an issue I doubt many people would know as it's unusual (for most users) to have 10 HDD's connected at once.

I'd test it with only a few drives on the suspect ports first.

EDIT: I CAN count.
 
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Nope I would say it's definitely not RAM...I've had a few faulty sticks in my time and this is completely different.

Yeah there are a lot of drives, 8 HDDs, 1 SSD and 1 DVD-RW, so all ten slots are used.

I hadn't thought about a BIOS update, but you say they update files don't mention fixing any SATA problems?

Bah. Not sure where to go with it then...it's difficult to swap things about (not just because of cabling) but because I need them all...wonder what I should do now...

It's still trying to fix itself as well. :rolleyes:
 
You are correct about the controllers. There are four ports, grouped as pairs, on the Gigabyte chip and 6 on the southbridge. I'd say either the ports on the southbridge are defective or there is a power issue.

What's your PSU like?

It's probably worth forgetting about the MFT repair, the problem that caused the corruption in the first place is likely hindering any efforts to fix it.
 
The power supply is good, it's an Enermax 625W PRO82+ EPR625AWT.

I don't think it can be a power issue as it happens when I'm not doing a lot...it's worth noting that the two 1.5TB are Western Digital green editions so they draw less power, and of course there is an SSD for lower power consumption.

The biggest draw is the 8800GTX but this last time it happened whilst I was trying to save a Photoshop file so I wasn't using the GTX, it was virtually idle :(

I'm thinking it's definitely a controller issue as well, not sure whether I could say it's conclusively defective, an RMA job, or a quirk of the board...


*edit* so much for being able to cancel the MFT check...as Windows booted it's dropped right back into it...think I'll have to leave it to it overnight and see what it's doing in the morning. :(
I can hear HDD movement sounds this time whereas I couldn't before so it's obviously doing something...
 
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What case do you have, and how tightly packed are the hard disks. The SSD wont get too hot and wont really care anyway, but 7200rpm disks can still get pretty warm, and generally prefer a bit of breathing space. Some cases just cram the disks in like sardines which can lead to overheating and in extreme cases data corruption.
 
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