Hard Drive Vanishing and other Nonsense

Azisien · 10-02-2012, 04:47 PM

Trying to help diagnose a problem for a friend. His PC is almost the exact same build as mine, so it hits close to home when the little thing starts dying!

It's a gaming rig originally put together in 2009 but has a few upgrades.

Total of four hard drives, 2 SSDs in RAID0 as OS boot, and 2 separate storage drives (1TB and 3TB).

Symptoms:

- While playing Borderlands 2 with game + steam installed on the 1TB drive, the game suddenly crashed without error message. Steam crashes without error message and must be restarted. If torrents are running with the upload/download folder on that drive, they become "could not locate file" until re-checked.
- Everytime the above happens, the 3TB drive disappears entirely from Windows. It reappears after a reboot, and it is visible in BIOs/POST.
- Once, again while playing Borderlands 2, entire PC shut down and wouldn't even POST anymore after ~5 reboots and waiting. Waited about an hour and it booted up again, but the other problems persist.
- Tested using other applications, crash seems to occur on any resource intensive application (video editing, Guild Wars 2 [not associated with Steam), and happened once while idle too.
- Re-installed and moved Steam and all games to the 3TB drive, experienced similar issue where the 3TB drive disappears.

WOT I THINK (and recommendations I gave):

-The 3TB drive is new, about a month old. I don't know why it being faulty would mess up everything else when almost nothing is installed on it, but computers are wacky beasts. I have recommended he run ChkDsk on all hard drives and report results.
- Faulty SATA cable(s), or faulty PSU cable connecting all of the hard drives.
- As always, the PSU may be failing. Since it is The Thing That Fails 99% of the time.
- Worst of all, and my most feared possibility, faulty MOBO (out of warranty).

Thoughts, NPF techies?

Aldurin · 10-02-2012, 05:31 PM

Sounds similar to what I just had happen with my main computer, basically the power supply was damaged by a spike and can't output enough energy to power the entire computer. I have to disconnect my HDD (my SSD is my OS drive), otherwise it draws too much power attempting to spin up and crashes the whole booting process, and the morning that this happened my computer failed to read the HDD partition (I use the 2TB HDD), and subsequent tests have shown that with the HDD disconnected, the computer boots up normally but fails to get the fans to full speed and can't process as quickly, confirming lowered output from the power supply.

I recommend disconnecting the hard drives that were crashing (assuming they aren't booted from or hold necessary programs) and testing to see how it handles, running the same applications from the other drives to see how it handles. If he has spare hard drives and/or power supplies that are up to specification, swap those in (individually so you know where the problem is) and test again.

If it's the power supply then basically what is happening is that the power output was lowered enough that it can't handle powering both the computer and the drives, but still tries to evenly distribute the power which denies the motherboard the full amount power it needs to do base processes.

If that's not it then all I know is that I've heard there's some kind of firmware/software issue with 3TB drives, but I haven't looked into it enough to know if there's anything behind that.

Azisien · 10-02-2012, 09:19 PM

He's going to try and RMA the power supply. In the meantime, I suggested he disconnect any auxillary stuff that may be drawing extra power from the PC (including the new 3TB) to see if that has any effect.

Aerozord · 10-03-2012, 02:44 AM

this is off topic but I am legitimately curious, what does your friend need over 4tb for? I mean I am abit of a data packrat and just barely break 300gigs

Azisien · 10-03-2012, 11:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aerozord

this is off topic but I am legitimately curious, what does your friend need over 4tb for? I mean I am abit of a data packrat and just barely break 300gigs

All Steam and Origin games (over 300), tons of torrents, room for screen capture, backup of said things.

10-02-2012, 04:47 PM	#1
Azisien wat Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 7,177	Hard Drive Vanishing and other Nonsense Trying to help diagnose a problem for a friend. His PC is almost the exact same build as mine, so it hits close to home when the little thing starts dying! It's a gaming rig originally put together in 2009 but has a few upgrades. Total of four hard drives, 2 SSDs in RAID0 as OS boot, and 2 separate storage drives (1TB and 3TB). Symptoms: - While playing Borderlands 2 with game + steam installed on the 1TB drive, the game suddenly crashed without error message. Steam crashes without error message and must be restarted. If torrents are running with the upload/download folder on that drive, they become "could not locate file" until re-checked. - Everytime the above happens, the 3TB drive disappears entirely from Windows. It reappears after a reboot, and it is visible in BIOs/POST. - Once, again while playing Borderlands 2, entire PC shut down and wouldn't even POST anymore after ~5 reboots and waiting. Waited about an hour and it booted up again, but the other problems persist. - Tested using other applications, crash seems to occur on any resource intensive application (video editing, Guild Wars 2 [not associated with Steam), and happened once while idle too. - Re-installed and moved Steam and all games to the 3TB drive, experienced similar issue where the 3TB drive disappears. WOT I THINK (and recommendations I gave): -The 3TB drive is new, about a month old. I don't know why it being faulty would mess up everything else when almost nothing is installed on it, but computers are wacky beasts. I have recommended he run ChkDsk on all hard drives and report results. - Faulty SATA cable(s), or faulty PSU cable connecting all of the hard drives. - As always, the PSU may be failing. Since it is The Thing That Fails 99% of the time. - Worst of all, and my most feared possibility, faulty MOBO (out of warranty). Thoughts, NPF techies? Last edited by Azisien; 10-02-2012 at 07:02 PM.

10-03-2012, 02:44 AM	#4
Aerozord So we are clear Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Former murder capital of the world Posts: 13,824	this is off topic but I am legitimately curious, what does your friend need over 4tb for? I mean I am abit of a data packrat and just barely break 300gigs __________________ "don't hate me for being a heterosexual white guy disparaging slacktivism, hate me for all those murders I've done."

10-02-2012, 05:31 PM	#2
Aldurin Lakitu Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 4,648	Sounds similar to what I just had happen with my main computer, basically the power supply was damaged by a spike and can't output enough energy to power the entire computer. I have to disconnect my HDD (my SSD is my OS drive), otherwise it draws too much power attempting to spin up and crashes the whole booting process, and the morning that this happened my computer failed to read the HDD partition (I use the 2TB HDD), and subsequent tests have shown that with the HDD disconnected, the computer boots up normally but fails to get the fans to full speed and can't process as quickly, confirming lowered output from the power supply. I recommend disconnecting the hard drives that were crashing (assuming they aren't booted from or hold necessary programs) and testing to see how it handles, running the same applications from the other drives to see how it handles. If he has spare hard drives and/or power supplies that are up to specification, swap those in (individually so you know where the problem is) and test again. If it's the power supply then basically what is happening is that the power output was lowered enough that it can't handle powering both the computer and the drives, but still tries to evenly distribute the power which denies the motherboard the full amount power it needs to do base processes. If that's not it then all I know is that I've heard there's some kind of firmware/software issue with 3TB drives, but I haven't looked into it enough to know if there's anything behind that.

10-02-2012, 09:19 PM	#3
Azisien wat Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 7,177	He's going to try and RMA the power supply. In the meantime, I suggested he disconnect any auxillary stuff that may be drawing extra power from the PC (including the new 3TB) to see if that has any effect.