GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 SSD hard drive read error

[pr0fess0r]

Hey Guys

I have a PC with the following specs (among other things):

Intel Devil's Canyon Core i7 4790K 4.0GHz 8MB LGA1150
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 Intel Z97 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2*8GB) DDR3-1600 CL9
Crucial BX100 129GB 2.5" SATA3 6GB/s SSD

On average every second time I start the machine I get an error after the BIOS screen "A hard drive read error occurred" and get asked to Ctrl-Alt-Del, which I do and then the machine loads up (Windows 10) fine.

The thing is I have tested every component of the machine (MemTestx86+ on the RAM, Intel Storage management says the SSD is fine etc) and can't find any faults, when the machine starts normally it's very quick and there's nothing I can find wrong. I'm wondering if this is maybe a BIOS setting or some sort of motherboard timing issue - can you suggest a way to diagnose why the error is occurring, or have any of you had similar issues?

Cheers

[dmdilks]

I'm just throwing this out there, but sometimes the SSD have a problem sata cables. You think they are clip in, but I have had them where you could pull them out. I would try the cable first. 

I had a pair Crucial 60gb one time where they would just disappear. I had to power it down and even turn off the power to get them back running again. I had to do a 3 firmware update to fix them. That would be the 2nd thing to try.

[pr0fess0r]

Thanks for that. The odd thing is that the machine runs flawlessly, sometimes for hours, after it boots up, so I would have thought a faulty connection might have caused a problem while it was running. I've thought about maybe moving the SSD to another slot which I might try when I reinstall the OS.

[shadowsports]

In addition to all that dmdilks has suggested, have you tried clr_cmos and setting things back up there.  I'm not a big fan of crucial drives (admittedly).  They are known for compatibility issues. 

Its unlikely the disk itself is bad since every other boot or so it works fine.  Was the disk new? If so, we're back to cable, BIOS setting, how windows was installed, etc. 

Did you let the installer format the disk?  Is it MBR or GPT?  If GPT did you use Diskpart?  The more info you can provide, the better. 

Hopefully we can help you figure this out.