Transferring between drives creates errors

Burly · 29 Aug 2006 at 22:28

Damn, when I tried that other drive in my PC, and put it back into the other computer, Windows doenst boot anymore! So I booted the XP CD and went into repair and ran BOOTFIX. It told me it was corrupted and created a new one. Windows now booted but explorer doesnt load.

Not sure what to do now!

Burly · 30 Aug 2006 at 00:54

Ok just reformatting the other PC. Damn this is causing me loads of trouble.

Right it must be the motherboard. Its not the RAM, used memtest and everything fine. Swapped between working cables and so on and nothing that made me think its cables fault (+ seagate tools tells me cable is fine and so is controller).

The only test my drives fail is the File Structure test. I reckon this issue was here long ago but I just didnt notice as errors only occur when transferring between drives and not onto CD/DVD etc.

Its an NF7-S Rev2 which is quite surprising. Now, not sure what I can do, how long is the warranty on this?

ByteJuggler · 30 Aug 2006 at 01:18

Burly said:
Ok, thanks for your reply.

Ive got a working drive and put it in with the Seagate. I tried copying stuff back and forth and got errors.

Then to test if its the cables, I used the cable from the working drive on the Seagate and tried copying stuff from partition to partition. Came back with no errors. But I don't know if that really matters? Because data isnt flowing down the cable? Data is on the same drive.
Then I tried with the "dodgy" cable and no errors aswell. But again dont know if its worth anything because data is going down the cable.

I'm totally lost as to what I should do next

Even when copying from partition to partition data will flow down and up the cable.... The hard drive doesn't actually "know" it contains partitions/files as such, the OS knows that. The hdd is simply a block device, meaning it basically gets asked by the OS to read and write fixed sized blocks of data. The OS gives meaning to the blocks as a filesystem with directories and files on. To copy a file, the OS must read the data blocks from the area on the disk belonging to the one file and write in the appropriate blocks on the other partition. The ordering etc of the new blocks on the new partition will likely be all different, so as you can imagine, there's not really any way the drive itself can "short cut" the process of reading from one partition and writing to another, to prevent data travelling down and up the wire. It looks to me that you have a cable issue at the very least. (Do you have a DVD writer or USB key? If so you might be able to use that as a secondary store to confirm this.) You might also possibly have a motherboard issue which could complicate matters.

Burly · 30 Aug 2006 at 03:53

Im transferring stuff onto DVD and verifying and no errors! Also I use MS backup software and send it to my USB key no errors either!

I'm starting to think cable issue. My head hurts.

ByteJuggler · 30 Aug 2006 at 11:03

Burly said:
Im transferring stuff onto DVD and verifying and no errors! Also I use MS backup software and send it to my USB key no errors either!

I'm starting to think cable issue. My head hurts.

Go get yourself a set of new SATA cables and replace all of them, your headache should subside I think...

Burly · 1 Sep 2006 at 16:25

Just got some, and I was hopeful for a while, but still loads of files corrupted when transferring across discs

Right I want to get this sorted as its annoying me like hell lol. This is a list of possible problems.

Cables - Not (have been replaced)
RAM - Not (tested)
Motherboard - Doesnt seem so as the problem only occurs when transferring stuff between drives not onto a USB key or writing a DVD.
Hard discs - Now seems likely

I have just run a test on each hard drive - backing up data (+2GBs) to a different partition on that same disc. The Seagate drive came back with errors and the other drive didnt. Surely that means this Seagate drive is the problem? Can I RMA it?

<edit> Just got an idea to try the possible faulty Seagate drive in a spare PC and do same test. I will see what happens. Anything else I can do to be sure this drive is the problem?

Burly · 1 Sep 2006 at 19:14

Other PC has no problems transferring between my drives. Its 100% motherboard issue

Sent this off to Abit just now.

Faulty NF7-S Rev 2

Hi, im experiencing a problem with the NF7-S Rev 2 where data gets corrupt when transferring across Serial ATA drives. Its taken me a while to pin point the problem but I’m 99% sure it’s the motherboard.

I have 2 SATA drives (Seagate 250GB & Maxtor 320GB). I have tried transferring data across with the drives in a different machine and the files verify correct. Also I have run diagnostics on the drives. This rules out a hard drive issue.

Next, I tested the RAM with memtest with no errors and the CPU with Prime95 again with no errors.

I then replaced the Serial ATA cables with some branded quality Akasa ones. Same problem occurred.

If I’ve overlooked something I’m open to any ideas but this seems like a strange motherboard issue. If not, can I send it out for a replacement as I think its still under warranty?

Thank you.