So I guess my hard drive is giving up?

[Craig321]

Hi,

Went on my PC this morning, started Winamp & some music and browsed the net.

Noticed TERRIBLE sound lag whenever the hard drive loaded.

Checked the event viewer and noticed these:

3 atapi event 9 erros
then a disk error event 11
then another 3 atapi event 9
then disk event id 11

All around 4:59am - 5:00am.

Also, practically every day get a disk error 11

The ATAPI error says it's on IDE port three, I guess it means my SATA as there's actually nothing on IDE port three.

When I make the hard drive load the sound lags horribly (sometimes he music almost stops playing it's so bad) and the mouse also lags which is a bad sign.

I did send Maxtor an email a few days ago about my daily event id 11, they asked me to run the full tests, so I did and they all past. Then they asked me if I could do a low level format which 'passed' but didn't help.

So basically now Maxtor are saying "The software says the drive is fine, so it's perfectly fine". And I really don't want to send my drive off for AGES as then I'll be without a computer.

Also, I rebooted Windows & it took over 30 blue bar slides across to load, it usually takes about 10...

Would these problems definitely be caused by the hard drive?

EDIT

Please don't say reinstall Windows. I have had this problem before on different builds and have rebooted which seems to have sorted it. But this problem shouldn't be happening at all.

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

Sounds like a buggered HD to me - and what more can you expect from Maxtor?

Backup all your data ASAP, then concentrate on diagnosing the drive. I'd personally RMA the drive, then flog the refurbished one on eBay.

What do you think I should diagnose it with? It passes all tests on PowerMax.

EDIT

Any ideas how Maxtor go about replacing? Do I have to send the drive back and wait AGES? Or will they come and pick my broken one up and give me a new one?

EDIT

My worry is that if Maxtor do replaces by me sending it, them testing it and then sending me a new one if it's faulty they might not find anything instantly.

There's sound lag when you load webpages all the time, it isn't too bad but noticable when listening to music. (I doubt they'll play music and browse the net with my hard drive in a test PC)

These massive lags that I'm having now usually only happen every once in a while & a reboot sorts it out for a while (reboot hasn't sorted it this time though which gives me some hope that Maxtor will find problems if I send the drive to them).

The disk errors in the event log only ever happen every day, so if they don't run the PC in Windows for over a day they won't see them.

Basically maxtor will probably stick the drive in a PC, run the PowerMax tests and if it passes on them then they're not replacing it, that's the impression I got when emailing them.

EDIT

Just read up on Maxtor advanced RMA thingy.

I give them a credit card number (kind of deposit type thing), then they send me a new drive and I have 30 days to send the broken drive back to them.

This way I won't be without my files and stuff for weeks and weeks.

What happens if I did this advanced RMA and they thought the drive had nothing wrong with it? Would they charge the CC? Or would they just clean up the drive and re-sell it?

Also, on the Maxtor site it says this:

If all the tests pass (no trouble found), the problem remains elsewhere in your system. Reconfirm all settings for hard drive jumpers, cables, and ATA or SCSI controllers, and disk operating system. Consult your host controller documentation or system manufacturer for assistance with SCSI termination or ATA controller capabilities.

So basically if I did the basic RMA they'd put it in a PC, run PowerMax and if that said it was fine then they'd send me the drive back.


Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Craig321]

So basically PowerMax finds no errors, on the Maxtor website it says if PowerMax does not find any problems then the hard drive is not faulty - is this true?

Could this problem be caused by motherboard? My onboard LAN on motherboard failed a while ago, so maybe the problems of the motherboard could have gone further?

If I send the drive using advance replace & the drive that I send Maxtor is not faulty what will happen?

EDIT

I can very safely say, there's something terribly wrong:

 

[Craig321]

What do the yellow dots mean?

I'd be ripping all important data off that drive if i were you

Seems to match up to the colour of the access time, so I guess the access time at that point?

Just booted the PC barebones so it wasn't network card, cd drive, cd-rw drive or floppy drive. Then changed the port of the actual hard drive and it went back to normal... 60mb/s speed, normal access times etc.

Then changed the SATA port back to what it was on and it went back to 3mb/s

So I've finally found it's the motherboard.

The motherboards onboard LAN broke a few weeks after I got it so I guess this motherboard was faulty from the start (I've now had three faulty motherboards in a row - first P5P800 SE OcUK sent me didn't work, now this one doesn't work and previous to that my Gigabyte board didn't work either).

RMAing motherboard tommorow if I get home in time.

I'd be ripping all important data off that drive if i were you

Was the first thing I did .




EDIT


Also, when I had my HDD in the working slot everything seemed fine apart from the mouse still ever so slightly lags all the time (tested with a wired mouse as well as my main mouse is wireless) so I guess that's to do with a dodgy motherboard as well & also my speed went all the way down to 1.10mb/s on the drive, but average on about 60mb/s (I don't think it should be having such massive drops during the test...)

I guess all the above is to do with the motherboard being dodgy.

Glad I've found the problem

Thanks for the help everyone!

 

[Craig321]

Could it possibly be using PIO mode instead of UDMA?

Doubt it, there's no options in the BIOS that let me change that & have never touched it from within Windows.

 

[Craig321]

I really don't think my hard drive is faulty any more as when I plug it into one SATA port it goes 3mb/s and in the other it goes at a healthy 60mb/s but drops sometimes to 1mb/s which isn't any good (that's explain the sound lag sometime when loading stuff).

Will be RMAing motherboard on Monday.

 

[Craig321]

Well, I'm sending the motherboard back anyway as the onboard LAN is broken. I really can't be bothered to wait months for OcUK to check and replace, but I suppose I'll have to...

I really don't see how the hard drive could be causing this? Works in one SATA port but not the other... ? Sounds like motherboard to me.