Unofficial Tex Murphy

So does Windows now see the 3rd Drive???
So it was Dumb Luck after all??? Wow, don't buy any Lotto Tickets for awhile...

Well yes, now that I put in a new fresh drive and partitioned it, it's visible.

My only concern is it's lifespan.

The harddrive is dead! Long live the harddrive!

-Fred

PS: Cub, I sent you that thing that we talked about.

I'm amazed how many posts this thread had on the 7th March in such a short space of time - I love how active this board is. Hope your hard drive problems are sorted out. It seems the time of year for them to be failing.

The other one went down about a month after I replaced it, so if this one goes down in four weeks, give or take a few days, I'll assume the problem wasn't fixed. Until then I'll just be plain nervous methinks

Also, I have got top men working on it.

Top... men!

-Fred

I love the Indiana Jones reference Fred...

Anyway, looking at those voltages you gave me it seems to be okay for the moment with regards to your PSU. Which leaves one other culprit (if it is not just bad luck with the drives themselves), and that's your southbridge controller.

You southbridge is an Intel ICH9R, but I will need you to go back into your BIOS and let me know a few things there.

Firstly in BIOS, go to 'Integrated Peripherals', then select 'On-chip ATA Devices' and press enter. Once there tell me all the settings it is set to. Also go into the 'AHCI Devices Group' and press enter, and let me know the settings there.

This ill give me a good idea about what mode the southbridge is controlling your HDDs by.

Also, in your 'standard CMOS Features' section (accessible via the BIOS main menu), tell me what each of the devices in the SATA1 through to SATA 6 parts are.

This will tell me what SATA ports are in use upon boot.

Post them here when you have got them!

-Cub. =o)

I just realized that I technically referred to you as a guy in a forklift driving around a large warehouse

Anyway, here's the details you asked for:

In the blue corner, straight from the Integrated Peripherals...

ON-CHIP ATA DEVICEEEES!!

PCI IDE Busmaster - [Enabled]
On-Chip SATA Controller - [Enabled]
RAID Mode - [IDE]

Also, let's see here... Oh yes. The CMOS Features thingy looked like this:

SATA 1: Not Detected.
SATA 2: Not Detected.
SATA 3: Not Detected.
SATA 4: Not Detected.
SATA 5: Harddrive.
SATA 6: Harddrive.

As for the AHCI Devices Group, however, it must have activated it's cloaking unit or gone into either warpspeed or hit 88 mph. Because I can't find it. Don't think I have it in my BIOS, to be honest.

The only other thing in Integrated Peripherals was the I/O stuff.

Hope it helps somehow.

I don't even know what a Southbridge is. Besides an actual bridge somewhere, I'd wager.

-Fred

Thanks for the info Fred... interesting that you've chosen ports 5 and 6 to plug your drives into... should not matter though.

1st step which is a MUST go to the MSI website and download the latest BIOS and flash it, along with the chipset drivers for whatever Windows operating system you are using. The website should have instructions on how to flash your BIOS successfully.

If this does not solve the issue (and unfortunately you won't know until another drive fails) I have but 2 remaining possibilities for the malfunction.

In that part where is says RAID mode, I should've also asked you to detail what choices you have to change it to. I'd wager that it would be a choice between ID (which you have chosen) and RAID/AHCI. The latter is by far the most efficient to work with in modern HDDs, but if you have installed your OS on the system while it was set to IDE then changing it now would cause you system to fail to boot.

Secondly, on your mainboard (physically, so you will have to open it up to take a look), are any of the 6 SATA ports you connect you drives to a different colour? The reason I ask this is becuase on some mainboards the southbridge offers two modes of function: one which can run in both RAID and IDE mode, and one that works well only in RAID mode. But both are controlled but a different chip. Depending on which chip governs the ports, they are represented by different colours. If this is the case you have the option of bypassing a possibly faulty controller by switching to SATA ports 1 and 2 instead of the 5 and 6 you current have your HDDs connected to. But once again, we have to identify if your motherboard offers two different controllers by seeing if they are coloured differently.


So after all this we have four possible options:

1. Running your drives in IDE mode is causing some sort of malfunction becuase of a faulty controller in this mode. Changing this to RAID/AHCI mode instead may solve this issue but will require a full OS re-install.

2. Running your drives in certain SATA ports is determining which sub-controller you are using and switching ports may solve this issue.

3. The controller is fine, and the last 2 drives you had were bogus (only problem is you won't know till it fails again).

4. No matter what you try your entire southbridge is faulty on no matter what you do drives will still fail no matter what.

The rest is up to you.

-Cub. =o)

I'm in favor of running this rig for another month, and unless the drive goes down like the Hindenburg (in flames) or the Titanic (due to the hubris of the captain) by then, all should be fine.

Of course it could go down like assassination of JFK - by which I mean it'll happen fast and nobody would have a clue afterwards. And then I'll consider the flashing bit. I'm vary of flashing my BIOS, having lost one computer to it in the past.

I will however, thank you from the depths of my heart for all your time and help figuring this stuff out.

Here's hoping it's all smooth sailing from here on out. Let's avoid the icebergs and grassy knolls, eh?

-Fred

Just a quick note I picked up on out of curiosity when I looked at your CPUz profile (and unrelated to your current issue although you may be interested to know):

You processor is running at 3ghz. This is acheived by a CPU multiplyer of 9.0x of a 333Mhz Bus Speed. Effectively giving you a Rated FSB of 1333Mhz and a CPU speed of 2997Mhz (or 3ghz).

I think you have the ability and headroom to overclock your system to a faster processing speed:

You can achieve this either by upping your CPU multiplyer in BIOS from 9.0x to 10x giving you:
333Mhz Bus Speed
1333Mhz Rated FSB
3.33Ghz CPU

OR

Keep your multiplyer at 9.0x and increase the speed of your FSB to 400Mhz, giving you:
400Mhz bus speed
1600Mhz Rated FSB
3.6Ghz CPU


...some food for thought. I run my computer (which was also 3.0Ghz at tock) at 3.8Ghz without any extra components. Mine runs at:
400Mhz Bus Speed (from a 333 stock)
1600Mhz Rated FSBm (from a 1333 stock)
Multiplyer at 9.5x
3.8Ghz CPU.

...and boy does it fly!

-Cub. =o)

Wings, rotorblades or levitation?

Seriously mate I have no idea what any of that means. I understood the gist of it - making my computer go faster, but I don't feel the need to. I'll be perfectly happy with it running stable and not crashing and burning on me

Again buddy - thanks a bunch!

-Fred