SATA Cables/HDD Problem

[aps16]

A week back I bought a new 1 TB WD Blue HDD for my PC, because my previous WD hard drive was acting weird of late. Random lockups, disk boot failure errors. So I got this new one, installed windows on it, placed it in the place where my original hdd was. I still have my older one though, I positioned my it at the floor of the cabinet.

 

After a week or so, I'm getting the problem again (random lockups but no disk boot failure messages). Now, I have pretty cheap cabinet, and I think the new HDD is positioned at an awkward angle, I mean it's placed kinda vertical with 2 screws holding it in place, there is no more space in the cabinet. The SATA cables I use are the black and red ones with a kind of clip to click it into place. When I take out and re-attach the cables, the drive starts working fine for a while, then the same thing again. Sometimes when I'm playing a game the sound just stops playing, the game freezes, textures do not load and whenever this happens the HDD LED lights up and stays that way until the game starts working again.

 

Surprisingly, my older hdd is not giving me anymore trouble at all now, maybe that's because it is on the cabinet floor now. Can anybody confirm that this is because of cables/cabinet and not the HDD itself? I'm doublful because I've never ever experienced bad SATA cables. Should I get a new, large cabinet with a lot of space? And what are the different kinds of SATA cables out there? I believe I should get a bunch of quality cables. I guess the ones I have are cheap, low quality ones. I can post a pic of the inside of my cabinet, if anyone wants to take a look. 

[CeeTeeDee]

do you have a motherboard that supports raid?

 

if you do you probably also have ahci and hot plugability support, hot plug is if you want to unplug the  disk when your pc is on... wierd feature.

 

you can soft disable hot plug in device manager under the disk settings or you can disable hot plugability in the mobo's bios.

 

i have windows 8 and 2 sata hdd's... and i get the same problem! so i disabled hot plugability and i a run defrag often

 

which seems to stop the thing from locking up randomly.

 

also, if you have some other legacy components on the sata ide/ahci chain, like a dvd writer you bought in 2008 or something... disconnect that, some dvd-rw/cd-rw drives that support sata don't support some of the other inline features... and cause your system to freeze.

[aps16]

Nope my mobo doesn't have RAID. And yes I have a Samsung DVD writer but I don't keep it connected.

[CeeTeeDee]

if thats the case then doubt its even a hard disk issue...

 

don't think the position of your hdd is going to impact the mechanics as such seeing as, while it may not be solid state,

 

its not a jumbled up conglomeration of parts...  its a sealed and balanced mechanism.

 

you've installed a new hdd and clean booted your OS, so now its either your ram, gpu, drivers (chipset, gpu) or even the psu...

 

those random freezing and lockups can occur for all manner of reasons and they're bloody annoying.

 

so to be safe, make sure all window services are running and uninstall any drivers you didnt get on the cd's for your gpu or mobo...

 

in situations like these you don't want to install anything foreign to the base/default installation.

[aps16]

Hmmm, I see. It can also be an issue of bad cables right?

[Slammer64]

Cables very, very rarely go bad, that's not saying it can't happen, but I would suspect the motherboard itself. Have you ever checked for flash bios upgrades? On the other hand, it sounds like the motherboard h/d controller is going out and if that happens, you'll need a new motherboard.

[Pkatt]

Yeah, do you know what motherboard you are using?      Also, what OS are you running?

 

 

Like Slammer, based on what you have said so far, I would suspect the motherboard.    Cables these days are digital, 1's and 0's, either they work or they don't.  I don't think a bad cable would give you random lockups like that, it just wouldn't work.   Also, I don't think the positioning of the drive has anything to do with it. 

 

Easiest and cheapest way for you to narrow down-  Since you are not having the same problems out of your old drive in the new position, start switching things out.    Switch the two drives, and see if the problem occurs on either.     Then put them back, and switch ONLY the cables, and see if the problem occurs, of follows the cable.   Then put them back and switch ONLY the SATA ports you have them plugged into, and see if the problem follows.    

 

That should narrow it down greatly to what part of the puzzle is causing the problem.

[Rayblue]

By the way, op, what's the specs of your PC? I think it has to be the cables or the motherboard and its BIOS.

[aps16]

Cables very, very rarely go bad, that's not saying it can't happen, but I would suspect the motherboard itself. Have you ever checked for flash bios upgrades? On the other hand, it sounds like the motherboard h/d controller is going out and if that happens, you'll need a new motherboard.

 

 

Yeah, do you know what motherboard you are using?      Also, what OS are you running?

 

 

Like Slammer, based on what you have said so far, I would suspect the motherboard.    Cables these days are digital, 1's and 0's, either they work or they don't.  I don't think a bad cable would give you random lockups like that, it just wouldn't work.   Also, I don't think the positioning of the drive has anything to do with it. 

 

Easiest and cheapest way for you to narrow down-  Since you are not having the same problems out of your old drive in the new position, start switching things out.    Switch the two drives, and see if the problem occurs on either.     Then put them back, and switch ONLY the cables, and see if the problem occurs, of follows the cable.   Then put them back and switch ONLY the SATA ports you have them plugged into, and see if the problem follows.    

 

That should narrow it down greatly to what part of the puzzle is causing the problem.

 

 

By the way, op, what's the specs of your PC? I think it has to be the cables or the motherboard and its BIOS.

 

I was suspecting the cables because they are really old, but as you say it can be the motherboard too. I'm a complete noob when it comes to motherboards and BIOS stuff so I have absolutely no idea what flash upgrades are.

 

I got the motherboard in 2009 if that helps and I'm using win 7 ultimate. I'll do what you said about narrowing down the problem as soon as I get home.

 

Here are my specs:

Core 2 Duo 2.93 GHz

2GB DDR2 Ram

320GB and 1TB WD blue HDDs

ATI Radeon HD5670

[Rayblue]

2009... You have to open up the case and see what's labelled on your motherboard. Usually for easy identification the brand is stamped, along with the model number, in white. 

 

The SATA cables could be initially the culprit, and I would recommend to replace them first (just note before unplugging).

[prideslayer]

Failing motherboard southbridge is what finally did my PC in a few months ago, though my board and cpu were even older than yours. I switched drives, exchanged them under warranty, swapped cables, everything.

 

The mounting can cause a problem if it's not secure, if you (or someone) stomps around a lot it could be 'swinging' back and forth on it's mounting -- not good when the platter inside is basically a gyro. Mount it up more solidly if you can find a way. You can get a USB/SATA adapter to test the drive with, or test in someone elses PC or a laptop or something, to rule the motherboard out. Mine were all passing all the diagnostics I threw at them on the USB adapter, failing randomly on the motherboard.

[aps16]

I finally got around to troubleshoot the problem. It was because of faulty cables, I replaced them with good quality ones and finally my PC is acting normal again. Thanks for the replies guys!!