Some of you may be wondering why I've not posted for a while - basically it is because my rig is currently in bits on the floor! 2 weeks ago, i took delivery of a nice shiny new Epox 8RDA3+ (yay!), and a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 80Gb SATA. After putting it all together, I started her up to reinstall windows, and -- the hard drive failed even to spin up. So I RMA'd it back to OcUK, who sent me another. This one span up fine! but unfortunately, when windows tried to format it, after a few minutes deliberation it spat an error message at me saying "drive damaged". So i downloaded the PowerMax diagnostic util from the Maxtor site, using my brothers PC, and ran that from floppy. Sure enough, it tells me that the drive is damaged. I RMA'd the drive, this time straight to Maxtor instead of OcUK, and they sent me a replacement. Gleefully I tore open the packaging and connected up the drive, attempted to reinstall windows, and ... .... .... - the same happened as with the previous one!! AAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!! So now I am thinking that either I am EXTREMELY unlucky, and despite the balance of probabilities have recieved 3 faulty drives in a row, The first drive was broken and did something to the SATA interface on the mobo, causing all subsequent drives to show as faulty, there is a compatability prob between the Silinx SATA controller on the mobo and the drive. [/list=a] What do you reckon? What should I do? do I RMA the third drive? or is it the mobo I should RMA? or is it the combination of both? Any help highly appreciated, since I am getting Bit-Tech fora withdrawl symptoms, and my SETI output is now 0 WU/d!! Thanx in advance from your sp00ny amigo.
Email maxtor, explain the situation and ask what they think. If u have a CC do maxtors "advanced RMA" cause its faster for you (they send replacement first). I think ur just VERY unlucky tbh, mebbe consider postie abuse?
Hi sp00n - Sorry to hear you're still having grief mate! IRC I remember reading something in a review about there being some issues with SATA on some of these boards, dunno if there was a fix / bios update or something that sorted it... Best bet is probably to email Epox & Maxtor and see what they say. Three in a row really does seem like bad luck!
Maybe you should RMA the maxtor back and then the MoBo too... sounds like it's too much of a co-incidence to have 3 go in a row. It could be because the SATA drives are newer, but i doubt it's that unreliable
I have a mobo (from Tiny, mind you...) that has an amazing gift. It can kill HD's. Any HD. Randomly. Them my PC died last time (abt 2 years ago) I got a new HD , and replaced it. it died. And again. It died. I got through 5 HD's in 3 days. Lucky PC World are a bit dim. However, thr moral is, try replacing the MOBO. RMA it, say its faulty (it is). Your drives shouldn't die that quickly, that often.
UPDATE Well, I got a call from the nice people at Maxtor today (when the number showed up on my phone beginning with 0035 i thought who the **** is calling me from Ireland??!!), a lovely lady with a nice Irish lilt(woo hoo!) who put me through to technical support to a nerdy german bloke (doh!). He said they had never come across this particular problem before. How reassuring. I'm expecting a Seagate Barracuda V 80Gb tomorro though, so he is gonna phone me back and see if it works, if so he knows it is his company's shoddy products are to blame (only kidding if anyone from Maxtor is reading!) Stay tuned for tomorrows update, thanx for the input peeps!
Indeed. Good luck! If its all the same, I'll put my pennies on it being the mobo. Feel free to prove me wrong Let us know....
Wireframe: Looks like you were right, it must be the mobo. Recieved the Seagate, exactly the same problem. Even with both drives plugged in, get the same prob trying with the second channel. Looks like i'm gonna RMA this crappy mobo, just waiting on the reply from OcUK. Well, at least i had some good news for a change: I just noticed that the replacement drive i recieved from Maxtor is a 120Gb!
Well at least you know where the problem is now, it's just a shame it's taken so many rma'd drives to get there Glad to hear you got another 40 gig free on your drive though... Also - are you still up for that chip swop once you have everything sorted?
JSJ: yeah mate, still up for the chip swap once i get this all sorted out (if i ever do!!. ) It's been running at 2300 fine, but i cant stability test without windows!
Any job RMAing that mobo with OcUK yet, you should get if all for free the amount of bloody trouble it's been!
the 8rda3+ uses the silicon image sata controller doesnt it? the same one the nf7-s uses and afaik abit fixed the problem with a bios update, epox didn't/haven't afaik
UPDATE 2 Well, for some reason, I decided to test the mobo one more time, and for some reason it now works! Or at least, it works with the seagate HD. I am gonna RMA the Maxtor (again!). I dont wanna install much at the mo till the maxtor gets back, cos I want to RAID 0 the pair of them. Still had loads of instability probs when installing windows though:- had to UNDERclock the processor and memory in order for the windows installer not to crash at the very last stage! . For now i'm running at 2320 (211 x 11, 1.75v). Just noticed I've been gone so long that there is a new smilie I like it! Anyways, jimbo, I'll arrange to meet ya soon with my spare CPU. These are its details: AXDA1700DLT3C 9740977280057 JIUHB0308XPMW I had it running fine at 220 x 10.5 (2310).
How bizzare! PCs really can be fickly things sometimes... why you should need to underclock to keep the installer stable I don't know.... Glad to hear things seem to sorting themselves out slowly As far as meeting up goes, I'd be more than happy to come over to you to get the chip rather than trying to meet up somewhere if that'd be easier for you... Anyway, I think you have my email, drop me a line. Do you use and chat clients, messenger, yahoo, etc...
WARNING Just noticed you're back down with you bad self and the MOBO of death. When my killermobo first started murdering drives, it did it sporadically. I had a drive go, I replaced it, it came back up for 4 months before it decided to turn serialkiller. I didn't trust the board anymore after that. Just a warning. Can't say nobody said.
Mr sp00n - you got all your stuff sucessfully RMA'd and up and running now? edit: Just seen you post about the mem test results... you're not having much luck are you.....
hey jimbo! i'm currently running at 206 x 11.5 (2369), with the ram at 6-2-2-2. Prime 95 runs fine for ages, but memtest86 still shows errors on test 5. I'm gonna trust prime95, and in the words of my mom "stop bloody messing around with it and put the case back together". At least the good thing to come out of this is my SATA RAID-0 array: 99 Mb/s sustained and 7ms according to sandra! 2.1 hrs / WU on S@H is ok too How shall we go about swapping my spare CPU then? do u wanna pop round mine, or shall I meet u in brum one day?
Hi mate - sorry I didn't get back to you sooner! My car has run out of MOT and isn't worth fixing so I've been having grief looking around for something else.... I'd be happy to pop over to yours - it'll probably be easier that way. If there's no massive rush on your part I could do with a couple of days as my car still isn't sorted. I could probably get over at the weekend?
