Error messages/difficulty w/new hdd's

[wdwrk8913]

Just added 2 1TB SATA Western Digital HDD's to my ASUS P5B Deluxe
based PC. I am having difficulty accessing one of these HDD's. PC
has 4 other SATA HDD's, all fine. Any operation to one of the 1TB's
takes for ever, often with the whole pc slowing severely, to the point
audio being played skips, etc. I'm also getting the following errors
in event viewer:

Source disk: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk5\D
during a paging operation."

Source Ftdisk: "The system failed to flush data to the transaction
log. Corruption may occur."

Source Application Popup: "Application popup: Windows - Delayed Write
Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file P:\$Mft.
The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your
computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file
elsewhere."

Source NTFS: "{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all
the data for the file . The data has been lost. This error may be
caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection.
Please try to save this file elsewhere."

My questions are

1) How do I determine which drive they're referring to as "Harddisk
5"?

2) What is "Delayed write" and why is it being implemented?

2) I also get a boot error from "American Megatrends" saying simply
"push F1 to continue". I am wondering if this is a RAID controller
problem, or some other BIOS issue, and how might I find out?. My MOBO
has 6 SATA slots, the troubled drives are in 5 & 6. At the moment,
there is no raid arrangement.

TIA

Dan

 

[Paul]

Just added 2 1TB SATA Western Digital HDD's to my ASUS P5B Deluxe
based PC. I am having difficulty accessing one of these HDD's. PC
has 4 other SATA HDD's, all fine. Any operation to one of the 1TB's
takes for ever, often with the whole pc slowing severely, to the point
audio being played skips, etc. I'm also getting the following errors
in event viewer:

Source disk: "An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk5\D
during a paging operation."

Source Ftdisk: "The system failed to flush data to the transaction
log. Corruption may occur."

Source Application Popup: "Application popup: Windows - Delayed Write
Failed : Windows was unable to save all the data for the file P:\$Mft.
The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your
computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file
elsewhere."

Source NTFS: "{Delayed Write Failed} Windows was unable to save all
the data for the file . The data has been lost. This error may be
caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection.
Please try to save this file elsewhere."

My questions are

1) How do I determine which drive they're referring to as "Harddisk
5"?

2) What is "Delayed write" and why is it being implemented?

2) I also get a boot error from "American Megatrends" saying simply
"push F1 to continue". I am wondering if this is a RAID controller
problem, or some other BIOS issue, and how might I find out?. My MOBO
has 6 SATA slots, the troubled drives are in 5 & 6. At the moment,
there is no raid arrangement.

TIA

Dan

Do you allow the drive interface to run at 300MB/sec, or do you
use the "Force" jumper on the back of the drive, to run them
at 150MB/sec. The latter may give a more stable result, if
the problem is related to the cabling and not the disk. (Some
brands don't have a force jumper, like perhaps a Hitachi.)

You might also consider downloading the manufacturer disk diagnostic.
Try the disk on port 5 or port 6 and compare the diagnostic results
to when the drive is on port 1 or the like. Maybe you'll get some
idea whether all the interfaces are compromised, or just 5 and 6.

If you have a PCI Express slot, you might be able to pick up
a card with a SIL3132 on it. And use that for the disks instead.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124027

Paul

 

[wdwrk8913]

Do you allow the drive interface to run at 300MB/sec, or do you
use the "Force" jumper on the back of the drive, to run them
at 150MB/sec. The latter may give a more stable result, if
the problem is related to the cabling and not the disk. (Some
brands don't have a force jumper, like perhaps a Hitachi.)

Paul - Thanks for the reply. The drive was hosed, I've RMA'd it back
to Newegg.

Can you elaborate on the effects of difficulty from cabling? I'm
assuming you mean the data cable from the HDD to the MOBO SATA
connection. What are the symptoms of such a problem, how common are
these troubles, & how are they avoided?

Thanks again,

Dan

 

[Paul]

Paul - Thanks for the reply. The drive was hosed, I've RMA'd it back
to Newegg.

Can you elaborate on the effects of difficulty from cabling? I'm
assuming you mean the data cable from the HDD to the MOBO SATA
connection. What are the symptoms of such a problem, how common are
these troubles, & how are they avoided?

Thanks again,

Dan

If the connection was bad enough, you wouldn't even get the ID
string showing in the BIOS.

I'm not aware of any diagnostic that can evaluate the error
rate on the high speed serial interface. It would be nice if
there was a counter or a rate indicator in Windows, that could
tell you how many commands had to be retransmitted.

In terms of damage to the cable, if it got bent or kinked,
that might be enough to change the impedance of the cable.
I haven't read any articles which evaluated the effects
of mangling a cable (how much bend or kink). The way to
check it, would be to use a digital scope with eye diagram
(mask) capability for SATA, and see how the eye degrades,
as the cable is bent. So the equipment is available to do
it - just needs someone with an idle curiousity and the
necessary gear

The "blue" (signal) is not allowed to touch the "red" (template).
To capture this, generally the test equipment cannot be placed
in line - instead the transmitter inside one device has to be
put into a test mode, sending out a repetitive test pattern.
If you bend the cable, the blue might touch the red, and
the error rate goes up. A similar test can be done for
DVI cabling.

http://www.tek.com/Measurement/Solutions/serial_data/images/eye.gif

Paul