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Nov 6th, 2006
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Sata Problems!!!

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Howdy, here is my sucky problem:

First off, my specs:
ASUS P4C800 Motherboard (I'm sure there's a zillion different p4c800 models but i can't find any other numbers right now)
P4 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB
MSI 256MB GPU (Again, I'm tired of wrecking my knees looking for the number)
2 x 17" Samsung LCD's
2 x 120 GB Seagate SATA Drives
Various other unrelated peices of hardware (DVD, Firewire/USB combo, key/mouse combo, blah, blah)
350W PSU

Also, I produce music with my computer with:
MOTU 896HD (Firewire High-Definition Audio Interface)
MOTU Midi TimePeice AV (Parallel Port Midi Interface/Syncronizer)

So here's my problem...

For probably 3 years I was using my harddrives on an integrated RAID controller on my motherboard... I had it set up for stripe, and a very delightful setup indeed... worked great, no problems...

Life got in the way and I had to leave my computer with some butcher (ie a friend who thinks he knows alot about computers, but actually he know alot about wrecking computers)... when i went back to retrieve it, the afforementioned butcher told me that it had just stopped working... i took a look at it and sure enough it was toast.... the asus picture thingy came up, then the RAID utility thing said "no drives" or something, then stopped...

i restarted, same thing
i restarted again, went into setup, and again, setup said no drives...

so since it was no working anyway, i set the raid controller to just normal ide mode....

still nothing...

now, this motherboard of mine also has non-RAID SATA plugs, so i switched over to there to see what happened... (note: i turned the raid controller off in the setup)

lo and behold there are my drives.... hmm... interesting...

out of curiosity, i went back to the RAID plugs, turned the raid back on in setup, and voila, the whole thing worked again...

booted up into xp, everything looked fine....

use it for a few minutes, and the harddrives freeze again (mouse pointer still functional, but as soon as you click or do something that the OS needs to go to the drive for, it kaks)

bummer.... so i figured the harddrives were toast...

when i got back to my home town, a dude i know at a computer store said that seagate drives have a five year warranty, so i gave them to him, and he sent them out to be refurbished... many weeks later they just gave me new ones so i didn't have to wait anymore (they were definately new, the bags were sealed up, etc.)

so i put them in, installed xp, everythings ok, then one day... kaput

so i tried the same thing, turned off the raid and plugged them into the non-RAID SATA plugs, and they were detected... so i went back to the RAID and everything was ok... for a while and then kaput

so, now i'm thinking that it's the raid thing... so i did all i could to get all my important stuff of the harddrive and put it on my ipod, switched to the non-RAID SATA (which i was not happy to have to do), installed xp, and same thing... after a while it just kaks... and when i restart, they don't detect...

so this is starting to annoy me! i figure it's not the drives, because a) what are the chances that two drives fail at the same time, and b) what are the chances that two drives fail at the same time TWICE and c) in my experience, when a drive fails, that's it, it's done, it ain't coming back... and mine always come back...

so what i've got into the habit of having to do is whenever this happens, first i shut off the tower, then i flick the little switch below the power chord off and then back on... sometimes this works... other times i have to open the case, pull the SATA plugs out and plug them back in... sometimes this works... somethimes i have to leave the computer off for a couple hours and then it'll work again...

either way, this situation is completely unacceptable... i do recording for money with this machine, and i have also done live sound with this machine.... this cannot happen to me in front of 500 drunken punkers!!!

i've read a few posts in this forum and i'm beginning to think my power supply unit is inadequate, but it was ok for like 3 years, and i really doubt that's the problem...

please help me! i shudder to think that i have to rely on my laptop to do my recordings (2.8GHz don't cut it!!!) wtf is wrong?
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Nov 8th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

Your "butcher" might have fried the mainboard (static), but this sounds unlikely when your RAID and non-RAID controllers are actually different chips and not combined in the same one (don't know). A good thing would be to interrogate him what exactly he tried to do with your computer and for what reason.

Shot in the blue:
I have no experience with S-ATA troubles yet and I don't know if S-ATA cables with extreme low quality like some IDE actually exist - but have you tried replacing one with a cable fresh from the store? They are a "common denominator", too. Some IDE cables didn't survive being touched more than once and bending them wrong could produce very similar effects like you described. Would be nice if it's that easy...

Quote ...
Various other unrelated peices of hardware (DVD, Firewire/USB combo, key/mouse combo, blah, blah)
350W PSU
You have quite a bunch of power-hungry hardware (depending on your GPU, too) that only a 350W PSU of best quality would feed sufficiently. Did you know that PSUs can get weaker/change their properties over the time? Maybe the load on the 12V during startup of all the motors etc. prevents something from being initialized correctly all the time?
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Nov 8th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

Thanx for the reply...

No doubt the butcher was sufficiently interrogated... trust me, if he was smart enough to know what he did wrong, he wouldn't be dumb enough to tell me...

yeah i thought about the cable thing, too... unfortunately, these problems have left me unable to make money, and i don't even have the funds to buy new cables and find out... however, assuming the unlikelyhood that both my cables are bunk, i've been just using one harddrive and switching the cables around to see if one is better than the other... i thought i had actually solved it but just now it kacked again... either way, it's been my experience that if it works at all than it probably works (i keep saying that but ovbiously something is working for a while and then kacking )

anyway, thanks for replying
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Nov 9th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

Quote ...
No doubt the butcher was sufficiently interrogated... trust me, if he was smart enough to know what he did wrong, he wouldn't be dumb enough to tell me...
That's a pity because every little detail on what he did could help. He could have tried to tune some settings wrong in the BIOS ("I'm gonna make your computer faster") or did he even open the case so that he could have damaged something physically?

Quote ...
however, assuming the unlikelyhood that both my cables are bunk,
That assumption once costed me a lot If both cables were touched the same wrong way they can be equally broken..:mrgreen: But I doubt that, too since they are much less sensible by design. I just thought that was an easy thing to try.

I found very few problems with P4C800 RAID controllers on Google (unlike the A8N SLI-Deluxe, there's much to read about problems, even similar to yours), this seems to be no common problem. No big help. But this and the fact that both independent controllers show the same thing in RAID and non-RAID, makes me think that the mobo could be defective.

Have you contacted Asus Support already? They know how to fix that maybe, if it could be fixed.

For the case that something was misconfigured by that guy, have you tried resetting the BIOS and the controllers to its defaults already?

Does the Event Viewer report something when the drives stop working during operation? (Go Start->Run, type eventvwr.msc <Enter>, in left tree view select "System" and browse through the red X marked 'error' entries, if any. If one matches the time your HDDs bailed out, doubleclick to unfold the message.)
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

no, the bios is set the way it always has been, i made sure of that... no overclocking, no other weird settings... that was one of the first things i did actually was reset the bios...

the thing is, i've freaked out on that guy a number of times before he got a hold of that computer... i don't think he tried to change anything or open the case up because he knows i wouldn't be happy... i believe him when he says he didn't do anything out of the ordinary... when i say he's a butcher, it's because he has this uncanny ability to wreck computers just by looking at them (i'm sure we've all met at least one of these people)... he's one of these guys that will delete directories from his program files directory because "i don't have time for add/remove programs", bullshit like that... but, as far as he told me, when it started acting up, he just left it alone because he knew that no matter what he did, i would probably blame him for wrecking it (i've made him a bit paranoid, thank god)

i was talking to a guy at the local computer store today and he said that in his experience there are alot of problems with SATA cables, so that being the cheapest thing to try, i think i'll go with that first... the other thing he said, like you did, was about the psu degrading over time...

thanks tho, i'll let you know what happens when i get new cables (fingers crossed)
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Nov 9th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

I'll cross my fingers for you, too :mrgreen: (You got my full compassion, I'm in the same kind of business...)
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Nov 9th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

i haven't bought the new cables yet, but there is definately something going on with one of my cables... when i use the one cable i hear clicky noise coming from the harddrive, and not when i use the other.... however, the same thing happens in windows no matter what cable i use
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

If nobody touched them before the problem came up, the cables get a bit out of the focus - they normally don't fall apart without help. Another idea would be to test the drives _plus_ the cables (second choice: the cables alone) on another computer, to rule them out.
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Nov 9th, 2006
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

all my friends are poor, they've all got p2's :s i don't know anybody else with SATA... i probably would have figured this out a long time ago if i knew somebody with SATA drives... oh well... i still doubt it's the cables, honestly... i figure that's a pretty lame thing to happen, considering all the complex things that can go wrong with a computer, but like i said, it's the cheapest thing for me to check right now... i have a friend that works at the board of education up here, he says he's gonna score me a better psu and see if that makes a difference... i was thinking of blowing out the one i have in there now... i've had to do that to the processor fan a couple times...
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Re: Sata Problems!!!

I'm still on P-ATA / IDE, too... It serves me 50+ audiotracks which should be roughly enough for simple productions Blowing away the dust is always a good idea. Dust plus humidity (or worse: plus nicotine) deteriorates the cooling performance and can make a fine, slightly conducting smear that can be really bad if piling up on the wrong place of a PCB. I'll cross my fingers again that the PSU would help.
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