Weird problem with a Seagate 200 gig

what power supply are you running?? with 4 hard drives it might be not
enough power


wrote:
I suppose its related to the nforce4 data corruption problem or heat
problem with the nforce4 chip which I think is related.

This has resulted in lockups on my PC. After tearing my hair out ---
though Ive been wrong many times before --- I think Ive narrowed it
down to my Seagate 200 gig which is new. I got it during Xmas and
installed it only a few weeks ago along with the the two new 160 gigs
Seagates I have and the new 160 gig Hitachi I have and a slightly
older WD 200 gig.

The PC seemed to only lockup when I was transferring data from or to
the 200 gig Seagate. I think when I switched from passive cooling
which had a problem only when I raided my drives ---- Im assuming an
old article I came across was true that claimed things seems to run a
lot hotter when you raided your drives --- like the drives and I
assume the motherboard chip. Passive cooling seemed OK as long as you
didnt really really stress the board. But when I changed to active
cooling I think I inadverdantly made things worse cause the contact
between chip and heatsink wasnt very good. The nforce4 motherboard
chip now has a metal core like the CPU chips. The old MB chips had no
core sticking out of the chip.

Thats one thing dont rock the heatsink back and forth -- easy to do
cause its held by some flimsy springs , cause you can chip the edges
of the core like the core on the CPU.

Right after that it started locking up intermittently when I was doing
data transfers. I did a scan disk and seagate desk tools diagnostic
test after I thought I isolated the problem to the seagate 200 gig.
Physically all my disks come out OK even the 200 gig Seagate. But it
fails the data test. Says the data on it - indexes etc are corrupted.
So I did a scan disk and Windows finds NOTHING wrong with it. However
I cant transfer any data off of it or on at all.

So I decide to take the HD out and put it in my other AMD 64 system
and it transfers fine. Im gettng all the data off it now in fact.
However I tested it again with seagate desk tools since I thought
maybe it was a system problem and not HD data problem. Nope. It comes
out saying corrupted data on this system too but with no hangs when I
transfer data.

Its all very strange. Anyway I reseated the cooling on my main system
and am taking all the data off my seagate 200 gig using my second
system and will reformat it.

I assume the heat problem corrupted the data on the 200 gig when it
was on my main system.


The main things are --- why doesnt WINDOWS find data corruption when
Seagate Tools does?

I assume the poor contact with the active cooling unit was the cause
of all the problems with the main system and that explains why it
still locked up when moving data from the 200 gig but then why didnt
it do it with other HDs? And of course the HD didnt lock up at all on
my other AMD system. I hope this doesnt mean there are several
problems --- maybe the newer Seagates do suck like some claim.

I also saw a post at a site where some guy use a temp probe to check
the temps on his nforce4 Chaintech and I assume many nforce4 boards
are like this since many other brands have data corruption problems.
He claims the temps were wildly off the readings. He got readings that
varied as much as 10-40 C !!!

Are these relatively static temps from nforce4 boards bogus? Maybe his
readings were off but if they arent that would explain some of the
problems people have with data corruption.

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:22:43 -0500, Marty wrote:

what power supply are you running?? with 4 hard drives it might be not
enough power

Yeah I was using several 400 watts a while ago and at a power
calculation site I did see I seemed to be close the max.

I bought two 500 watters Ultra X and supposedly a SuperFlower which is
according to some posters decent sold under the MADDOG brand.

Didnt have any problems with the MADDOG if it is the MD until
suspiciously I changed the nforce4 chip cooler so Im pretty sure its
that , However I was thinking of swapping it out cause like I said Im
getting screwy readings with MBM.

In bios my voltage and temp readings seem fine but the voltage
readings are wacked out in MBM with the 5 volt rail reading 3.27
That alarmed me until I rebooted and checked the bios and the bios
always reads very close to what the voltage should be for all
readings.

I might still try swapping the ULTRA X for it just for the hell of it.
Ive also tested it by unplugging extra HDs and only using 2.

The no 1 suspect is the chip cooler.

Im really disgusted with this system at the moment.