P4G800-V killed 2 SATA hard drives...

[Greg]

Earlier this year I bought the P4G800-V motherboard and two SATA hard
drives. My C drive is a Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000 RPM and my D
drive was (I'll explain after) a 80GB Seagate Barracuda. The D drive is
more of a backup and game drive.

After using the D drive for a while, I began to notice high CPU usuage a
very poor performance. I downloaded HDTach to benchmark it and it reported
3MB burst read and 70% CPU usage. I tried rebooting and unplugging it, but
it didn't fix the problem. Finally I bought a new hard drive... a Western
Digital 80GB SATA to replace it. Well, guess what? After only a few weeks
of owning the drive, the same damn thing happened. HDTach is reporting
3.3MB burst and 60% CPU usage. Anytime I use the drive (such for copying a
big file), I can see the CPU usuage go way up in the Windows Task Manager.
Windows becomes very slow responding until that drive has finished.

Something must be wrong with this motherboard for it to kill hard drives.
I've always been a happy customer of Asus, but it looks like this will be
the last motherboard I buy from them. Anyone else experience a similar
problem with their Asus board?


My system specs:
P4 2.6C HT 800MHz FSB
Asus P4G800-V
4-512MB Kreton PC3200 RAM (Dual Channel)
36.7GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA
80GB Western Digital 7,200 RPM SATA
ATi Radeon 9600 PRO
Creative Labs Audigy
Pioneer 4x DVD+/-RW
Scorpio 868WS (Silver) Case

 

[Rob Hemmings]

Earlier this year I bought the P4G800-V motherboard and two SATA hard
drives. My C drive is a Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000 RPM and my D
drive was (I'll explain after) a 80GB Seagate Barracuda. The D drive is
more of a backup and game drive.

After using the D drive for a while, I began to notice high CPU usuage a
very poor performance. I downloaded HDTach to benchmark it and it reported
3MB burst read and 70% CPU usage. I tried rebooting and unplugging it, but
it didn't fix the problem. Finally I bought a new hard drive... a Western
Digital 80GB SATA to replace it. Well, guess what? After only a few weeks
of owning the drive, the same damn thing happened. HDTach is reporting
3.3MB burst and 60% CPU usage. Anytime I use the drive (such for copying a
big file), I can see the CPU usuage go way up in the Windows Task Manager.
Windows becomes very slow responding until that drive has finished.

Something must be wrong with this motherboard for it to kill hard drives.
I've always been a happy customer of Asus, but it looks like this will be
the last motherboard I buy from them. Anyone else experience a similar
problem with their Asus board?


My system specs:
P4 2.6C HT 800MHz FSB
Asus P4G800-V
4-512MB Kreton PC3200 RAM (Dual Channel)
36.7GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA
80GB Western Digital 7,200 RPM SATA
ATi Radeon 9600 PRO
Creative Labs Audigy
Pioneer 4x DVD+/-RW
Scorpio 868WS (Silver) Case

Just a thought - what's your case temperature like? With that list
of peripherals (which includes several power-hungry devices), I'd
suspect that you need good extraction and very good airflow within
the case - I've killed a couple of HDs that I ran too hot without
realising it (over 55C when actually measured.) If it's not that, it
could be that the PSU is not up to the job and that's killing your
HDs (many PSUs included with cases have poor regulation, even if
they are quoted as >400W).
Have you tried running WDs HD own diagnostics on the 80GB
SATA?
HTH

 

[Paul]

Earlier this year I bought the P4G800-V motherboard and two SATA hard
drives. My C drive is a Western Digital Raptor 36.7GB 10,000 RPM and my D
drive was (I'll explain after) a 80GB Seagate Barracuda. The D drive is
more of a backup and game drive.

After using the D drive for a while, I began to notice high CPU usuage a
very poor performance. I downloaded HDTach to benchmark it and it reported
3MB burst read and 70% CPU usage. I tried rebooting and unplugging it, but
it didn't fix the problem. Finally I bought a new hard drive... a Western
Digital 80GB SATA to replace it. Well, guess what? After only a few weeks
of owning the drive, the same damn thing happened. HDTach is reporting
3.3MB burst and 60% CPU usage. Anytime I use the drive (such for copying a
big file), I can see the CPU usuage go way up in the Windows Task Manager.
Windows becomes very slow responding until that drive has finished.

Something must be wrong with this motherboard for it to kill hard drives.
I've always been a happy customer of Asus, but it looks like this will be
the last motherboard I buy from them. Anyone else experience a similar
problem with their Asus board?


My system specs:
P4 2.6C HT 800MHz FSB
Asus P4G800-V
4-512MB Kreton PC3200 RAM (Dual Channel)
36.7GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA
80GB Western Digital 7,200 RPM SATA
ATi Radeon 9600 PRO
Creative Labs Audigy
Pioneer 4x DVD+/-RW
Scorpio 868WS (Silver) Case

Chances are, your drives are being accessed in PIO mode. There is
a "feature" in Windows, where the transfer rate is reduced in
response to detected transfer errors from a disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

It would be much simpler to have an interface in Device Manager,
where the accumulated transfer errors could be seen (like a
counter), so you would know there was a problem. But slowing
the drive down, sure gets your attention

There are Unix environments that have had this feature for years,
before Microsoft copied it.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=#[email protected]

With SATA drives, there are two levels that could be at fault.
The SATA cable is an extra layer of data transmission, and
maybe it has its own transmission check ? I don't know about
that. The sectors on the disk themselves have a CRC check as
well, and I don't know if this is part of what Windows is detecting
or not. Since Windows has alerted you to this problem, it would
be a good idea to find the root cause - if you use just the
workaround, Windows will dial down the disk again if it detects
trouble. The KB article is written assuming the problem occurs
when recovering from S3 Suspend, but who is to say it cannot
happen purely in response to transmission errors. I don't know
enough about Windows to know if that "counter" I referred to,
is available somewhere for you to look at or not.

If you like to resume from suspend a lot, then maybe there is
nothing wrong with any hardware, and the problem is the OS has
attempted to use the disks before they are ready. We know there
is already a problem with a Hitachi/IBM drive waking in time with
some Asus motherboards, and both Asus and Hitachi point fingers
at one another. Maybe there is something the BIOS could be doing,
to delay the resume operation, so the disk has enough time to
spin up. If it wasn't for this complication, I would have
suggested changing SATA cables, but we don't know if the source
of Windows grumbles is "resume related" or not.

Anyway, try the workaround, and see if that fixes the symptoms,
at least temporarily.

Just a theory,
Paul

 

[William]

Chances are, your drives are being accessed in PIO mode. There is
a "feature" in Windows, where the transfer rate is reduced in
response to detected transfer errors from a disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;817472

It would be much simpler to have an interface in Device Manager,
where the accumulated transfer errors could be seen (like a
counter), so you would know there was a problem. But slowing
the drive down, sure gets your attention

There are Unix environments that have had this feature for years,
before Microsoft copied it.

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=#[email protected]

With SATA drives, there are two levels that could be at fault.
The SATA cable is an extra layer of data transmission, and
maybe it has its own transmission check ? I don't know about
that. The sectors on the disk themselves have a CRC check as
well, and I don't know if this is part of what Windows is detecting
or not. Since Windows has alerted you to this problem, it would
be a good idea to find the root cause - if you use just the
workaround, Windows will dial down the disk again if it detects
trouble. The KB article is written assuming the problem occurs
when recovering from S3 Suspend, but who is to say it cannot
happen purely in response to transmission errors. I don't know
enough about Windows to know if that "counter" I referred to,
is available somewhere for you to look at or not.

If you like to resume from suspend a lot, then maybe there is
nothing wrong with any hardware, and the problem is the OS has
attempted to use the disks before they are ready. We know there
is already a problem with a Hitachi/IBM drive waking in time with
some Asus motherboards, and both Asus and Hitachi point fingers
at one another. Maybe there is something the BIOS could be doing,
to delay the resume operation, so the disk has enough time to
spin up. If it wasn't for this complication, I would have
suggested changing SATA cables, but we don't know if the source
of Windows grumbles is "resume related" or not.

Anyway, try the workaround, and see if that fixes the symptoms,
at least temporarily.

Just a theory,
Paul

I use a asus a7v8x motherboard with a sata raid config and I have had no
problems you may check the output of the 5 volts and 12 volts output
of the power supply and drive temp.