SATA HD refreshing.. again

[jimwalther]

Hello everyone,
*sigh* continous computer problems recently.
I had a faulty hard drive replaced it with a 320 gb SATA seagate hard drive a little while ago(starting from scratch). The old hard drive kept refreshing; it was whirling down, then spinning, the whirling.. etc. After installing the new hard drive the problem seemed to subside but occasionally it still happened and recently it seems to be happening more often. This problem seizes up my computer and I have gotten the blue screen of death a few times. I was wondering what might be the problem with it? Could it be my motherboard? Could it be possible I installed the hardware incorrectly? I have looked around and cant find any other advice other than "hard drive is dead, replace it".
Anyways, some reading or advice (or even direct solutions) would be very much appreciated.
Thanks guys and girls :),
Jim

Motherboard: ASUS P5GD2-X
HD: Seagate SATA/300, Barracuda 3.5" Internal Hard Drive, 320 Gigbytes 16 MB Cache

[mechbas]

Do you have another machine to try the new HD in?
I know it seems unlikely but I've had some bad drives right out of the box myself.

[jimwalther]

Thing is that it happens quite randomly. Some days it only seizes up once really bad giving me the blue screen. And other times it will refresh for 10 minutes but come out ok.

[mechbas]

Thing is that it happens quite randomly. Some days it only seizes up once really bad giving me the blue screen. And other times it will refresh for 10 minutes but come out ok.

Do you have another machine to try the new HD in?

[jimwalther]

Originally Posted by jimwalther
Thing is that it happens quite randomly. Some days it only seizes up once really bad giving me the blue screen. And other times it will refresh for 10 minutes but come out ok.

Do you have another machine to try the new HD in?

no, unfortunately i dont, in the event viewer it shows many event 51s if that helps at all. ^.^
thanks again

[mechbas]

this was picked up at another site, it may help.

Disable NCQ on the NVIDIA nForce4 controller

In my case I never had to go past step one. Once I disabled Native Command Queuing and rebooted the problem was solved.

[okibao]

Hey I think I just purchased the same HD as you. I think mine is broken...I cant get it to even be recognized. I requested a replacement

[jimwalther]

Disable NCQ on the NVIDIA nForce4 controller

how do i get to these?

[bobbyraw]

was the first HDD on a sata port, are you still using that old HDD

[jimwalther]

Both old and new HD were using SATA. The new HD is using a new SATA cable and still has the same problem plugged into the other master SATA port. I chucked the old HDD because it was getting to the point were every 10 seconds it would seize up and crash.

[bobbyraw]

try other sata slot,,,how many you have on your board

[jimwalther]

Both HDDs were SATA, i the new one has a new cord and it didnt have an effect switching to the other master port.

[jimwalther]

Sorry for double post, i have 2 master slots and 2slave ports. only have 1 HDD installed on my comp

[willcomp]

Power supply?

[jimwalther]

Power supply?

how can i figure out if the power supply is the problem?

[willcomp]

Swap power supplies. Borrow one from another PC or a friend if you can.

If you can't swap power supplies, try another power connector.

The odds of 2 hard disks failing in the same unusual way are very small. I'd look at other causes.

[jimwalther]

Thanks ^.^ I will give it a try (as well as any other future suggestions).

[jimwalther]

Problem solved! thanks guys, kind of odd for a power problem i would think, i thought powerboxes either worked or didnt, apparently not. Anyways, thanks for the help ^.^

[willcomp]

Poor quality or degraded power supplies (PSUs) are the root of many PC problems. Appeared to me that drive was not adequately powered. Could have been an inadequate PSU or a faulty one.