Major hard drive problem...Long read...

merlinxi

Alright here it goes. For about a week I have been trying to figure out what's been going on with my NEW hard drive. I will explain what is happening:

First off, sometimes when I load programs, the hard drive will read unusually hard, taking a long time. This should not happen especially on a system such as mine, and the hard drive I have.

For instance, as soon as a game, or some other thing needs to access information the hard drive will read hard, and pause the game or make it jerk, or skip. I KNOW this is not a video card problem, because the 9600 XT is able to hande mostly anything on 1024x768 without Anti-Anliasing on, and graphics on medium.

It used to be so BAD that when I go to open a big file, say a executable that has an installion progam, the hard drive will read so hard the light would be steady. I wouldn't be able to do anything else until the program was done loading.

To also get your panties not in the re-format twist, this WHOLE installation was brand new. Even my motherboard was new. Got the new motherboard, and hard drive and pentium. Formatted this brand new hard drive in NTFS and then installed XP fresh, clean and beautiful.

Now this hard drive crap was not noticable until, well files started getting on my computer. Let me give you instances:

The Sims 2 EVERYTIME a chess board move is made, the game pauses for about 1.5 seconds to think, I know it's coming from the hard drive, cause I can see it read for that little amount of time. OR when the character changes his/her clothes, it needs to think and pauses. Or when the car to work comes, OR when he gets food out of the rerfrigerator. I KNOW this is not the game as other people who have gotten this game are not experienceing this problems, and I can't find anyone else with this problem. Times these pauses by all the events happening in the game, and it almost makes it un-playable.

Counter-Strike, say the game first loads I join a game, the game will do that pause thing and skip, skip, skip in it's sound. Now I am thinking it's just loading information to the HD for the first time, maybe this is normal. BUT IT HAPPENS everytimes. Both on regular counter-strike, and beta.

Another bad thing for some random reason, ANY GAME I EXIT. It will take up to maybe 40 seconds for the hard drive to probably what I think it's doing, to erase the informaiton in the page file it loaded into when I was playing the game.

Another weird thing is, it takes my simple programs sometimes a split second to load. Other times friggan 10 seconds. NOT EVEN MY FATHER'S computer, who is running a celeron takes that long!! EVER.

Now this is what I have done to rectify the problem:
I have the MAXTOR (PURPOSELY got from a GOOD company to not experience any problems. The model is:
Maxtor 6Y20M00 SATA

I have gotten Maxtor's hard drive diagnostic utility. I have done all their tests. The first time I ran it, it found a problem, it didn't tell me exactly what it was, but it fixed it and, then I ran all the tests AGAIN and it didn't find anything. That took about 4 hours.

I got perfect disk 6, and did the MOST aggresive defragment. Everything defragmented, OFFLINE, and ONLINE. The page file, the boot sector, the hard drive, and smart defragment. EVERYTHING.

I have the latest chipset drivers on my computer. All the latest XP updates, (except SP2). The "big" hard drive enabler from maxtor.

I checked the BIOS settings numerous times. Made sure every setting was correct.

My RAM timing, and speed.
My pentium is NOT overclocked.
My SATA settings, all reccomended settings are on.
I have the latest bios from MSI, I also have the latest motherboard for Pentium 4 from them.

Here are my specs:
Intel Pentium 4 3.0E 800 FSB 1MB Cache
1000 MB DDRAM PC 3200
Maxtor 200 GB SATA
WD 40 GB
WD 8 GB

Please help, I can't figure out what is going on.

merlinxi

Anyone help??

nitolbot

Hi. I am not an expert on dis but I DID have a similar problem. I turned my system disk & anoder HD, both I have been using for atleast an year without any probs to MS dynamic disk s o Icould try out software raid. after I did it I started noticing similar slowdowns like you mentioned. & I tell you it was a PAIN IN DA @$$!!!!! but you stated that you formatted your HD to NTFS since you had problems BEFORE you formatted to NTFS I am assuming you did not have dynamic disk. but if your system disk is a dynamic disk maybe you could try taking it off. I dont know how to take dynamic disk off. I couldnt find any option to do so, so I backed up all da data & I raided both the disk using a raid card :s . Hope dis helps

merlinxi

It's an SATA drive. I read in my motherboard's manual, if you have teh cable on a 90 degree angle, it will have loss information is this true??

Merlin

merlinxi

Can anyone help me? I have done a low level format, and re-installed windows xp, and the same problem! I don't understand what is wrong with this hard drive. I really need help does anyone know what is going on?

grog

Your chipset for the SATA controller would not be a ICH5R would it?

If it is I think that could be your problem.

http://forum.msi.com.tw/thread.php?t...ightuser=25916

If it is the controller as I suspect you could try a PCI SATA card and disable the onboard controller or swap the SATA for an ATA drive with a friend.

Does not have to be a drive problem, could be a controller issue.

Greg

merlinxi

I had a feeling.

I guess ill just get the controller card, no biggie I guess.

Merlin

merlinxi

This really sucks. So I have to get a controller just to make my hard drive work correctly???? IT's like MSI sold me a broken board. They could of warned me before I bought it.

Merlin

merlinxi

Thanks for the help. I ordered a 67.00 friggan doller SATA controller. Oh well, I really hope this fixes the problem. I am sure it will. Why do I got to get te broken stuff?

drakesteakn

u could call MSI and bitch at them, and get a new mobo. at least u can try.

merlinxi

The MB is great except for this problem, getting the controller card is no biggie, just shouldn't of been necessary.

CDsDontBurn

i say return the board for another board. it sounds to me that the onboard SATA controller is defective. If you get another MSI board and it does the same thing, get another board, like ASUS, ABIT, or Gygabyte just to mention a few.

ExitiosuS

I probably wouldn't of even gone that far.

Especially if it was a place that does returns, I would've said it was defective. lol.

But I had that problem awhile back when I had my old PC... It was a 1.8ghz+ AMD Athlon XP (Way out of date, I know...that's why it doesn't exist anymore ) Anyways... Whenever I'd try to load a game, or even software like MS WOrd for example, it would lock up completely with the HDD going absolutely nuts - really loud, too. So I reformatted thinking it might've just been the partition, turns out it wasn't. Three days later the HDD died while loading Summoner, go figure. Stupid thing. :P

But ya. Have you checked all the connectors, verified your HDD is running on DMA mode(not PIO mode), etc...?

I think that's the best 'advice' I can give on this, only because last time my problem sounds similar to yours, and it ended in a nice clacking noise and then a bzzzzzrrrrrrcick*screen freeze, mobo restart, OS not detected* rofl.

So ya. :P

EDIT: I forgot to mention I'm a fan of Asus, I've never had any issues with Asus, and since I started buying Asus boards back four years ago or so, they've always been pretty true to me.

merlinxi

I never had trouble with MSI boards though this is the first time I am using SATA. This board is a very good board and the controller card comes wednesday. At least now I can get the hard drive working, who knows maybe I'll get another 200 gb and raid em. I have formatted and re-installed windows so many time now, that it doens't even phase me anymore. LOL


Merlin

ExitiosuS

I guess that's a true optimist's way of looking at things.
lmao

merlinxi

I have learned being more optemistic now, makes me happy. It also bring me better luck.
Someone once said:

"I think I can, I think I can."

Remember this:
"If you think you can't, you won't."

Merlin

CDsDontBurn

there is always a first time for everything Merlin. I'd say return/exchange the board for a different brand. Being optomistic sometimes requires change.

merlinxi

Yes but if the rest of the motherboard is great, the controller card is good enough. That is just me.

merlin