TBE on 15/9/2009 at 04:27
Why are you running SATA drives in IDE configuration? You should be able to set them up in your BIOS as SATA. What are your choices in the bios for your hard drive controller? You should be able to make it RAID or something else like ACHP? Anyway I think I'd start there for starters. Especially running Win 7. If you don't have a whole lot of stuff on some of those drives, I'd recommend you set up two of them together as a RAID 0 for better performance. Your hard drive controller on your motherboard may be going out if changing settings from IDE to other doesn't help. That ACHP one, you'll have to reinstall windows though, so warning. Let us know what settings you can pick in BIOS.
scarykitties on 15/9/2009 at 04:46
The drives are set to IDE, with the other options being RAID (meaning I'd have to re-arrange/remove partitions, plus I'm not too keen on RAID 0, myself) and ACHP, which I didn't understand/don't know about.
I've heard that one can install the ACHP driver from an OS, though (hopefully avoiding the need to re-install the OS, if that is necessary), but do you think that'd really serve to fix the problem? What IS the problem, exactly? I see symptoms, but I don't understand what the true complication is.
TBE on 15/9/2009 at 07:22
Well you can set them to RAID, but in the RAID configuration, you normally tell it if you want any of the drives to work together. You can set it to JBOD (Just a bunch of disks), where it won't reformat your stuff or anything. Try to see if that's an option.
Brian The Dog on 15/9/2009 at 09:40
To check it's not the PSU, you can take out or unplug all the devices except those absolutely needed - take out the soundcard, all except one of the memory sticks, and unplug the external power to the graphics card (or even better, if you have on-board graphics on the motherboard, remove the graphics card completely). Keep all the hard drives though, as you're wanting to check it's not them. Then just keep booting into the BIOS and see what is happening.
bikerdude on 15/9/2009 at 11:09
Quote Posted by scarykitties
I bear bad tidings. Against all my hopes, the crashes are back. It looks like it must be something with the motherboard, though I'm hoping like mad that it doesn't require me to replace it. Gawd, I hate fiddling with CPUs.
UPDATE AGAIN: Okay, it working again, now that I swapped HDD 1 over to SATA 1 and HDD2 over to SATA 3 (rather than 2 and 4, respectively). So, again, unplugging and fiddling with the wires is the fix. What the flippin' donkey is up?
this osunds like it could be an intermittent fault with the sata cables or the mobo... change all the sata cables to rule them out.
scarykitties on 15/9/2009 at 12:31
Thanks all for the advice. I'll start by replacing all SATA cables, then, if that doesn't work, I'll go back and start removing devices, as recommended, to try isolate the fault, and if that yields nothing, I may try that JBOD configuration.
scarykitties on 15/9/2009 at 16:08
Got a response from Biostar:
Quote:
Based on your symptom problem which was seen before possible faulty southbridge controller, try to replace motherboard.
Precisely the response I'd hoped NOT to get. If there's any final advice as to something else that could be the problem, how to fix it, or even some recommendations on a better motherboard, all would be welcome.
EDIT: I've been looking at (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358&Tpk=N82e16813128358) this as a potential replacement. I always get nervous with boards that so many say is great, and yet so many say comes DoA or with heavy maintenance required. Input from the experts?
bikerdude on 15/9/2009 at 18:32
hang on, how old it your mobo, you can send it back to be replaced or repaired.
and if you want to get a new mobo the only thing I woud strongly suggest is what ever mobo you end up buying, always try and get one that has direct RMA support in your state byt the seller in the first year and the maker in the subsequent years.
That said that Gigabyte mobo looks ok, Im running a Gbyte GA-X38-DS5 atm myself, but only because they have RMA presence direct in the UK.
scarykitties on 15/9/2009 at 23:44
I live in the middle of nowhere. Sending in the motherboard would be kind of pointless, I think, because it would cost as much to fix or replace as it would take to buy a new, better one, like that Gigabyte.
heywood on 16/9/2009 at 00:48
I had the same symptoms with a couple of Western Digital "Green Power" hard drives and an Asus P5K mainboard. It was solved by switching to the SATA cables supplied with the drives. The SATA cables supplied with the Asus board seem to work fine with my Samsung DVD combo drive and Seagate hard drive (which hosts the OSs), but not the Western Digital drives.
