Delayed write failure

[Wayne]

Hi guys,
My first post. Hope you can give me some clues as to the difficulties I'm having. Please go easy here as I'm no spring chicken anymore and it might take a while for your help to sink in
I bought a new GA- Z68X-UD7-B3 board a couple of months ago and put together my latest build. Since finishing this build I have intermittent/repetitive "delayed write failures", which I have never had with my five previous builds. It first occured when downloading off a usb stick, but didn't come back for a further three or four more downloads, then bang, back again. It also occurs when downloading games from a disk to my hard drive, again intermittently as well as off the internet. So far I have two games on Steam that I cannot access. I'm guessing caused by this delayed write failure. If I do manage to install the game on my pc I then can't get the updates required and Steam tells me the game is unavailable and to try again later and or a problem has occurred with Steam and it shuts down. I've tried HD Tune which says the hdd is ok, also the fixes on the Microsoft Help and Support site, save for the registry mod but all is as it should be acccording to the instructions. The only other thing I haven't tried is that the cables are 80 wire 40 pin, which as they came new with the mobo I thought would be spec'd ok.  If its of any use my specs are:

Intel i5 (default)
8gb G.Skill 1866 ram
Radeon 6970 2gb card
1TB Samsung spinpoint hdd
Windows XP Pro (32-bit)
Silverstone 1000w psu

If I've left anything out please ask.
Thanks,
Wayne.














   

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

In am at a loss here as you are talking about the drive as an IDE PATA type but there is no connection for this type of drive on this motherboard!  

The controller ports on the board are all SATA and so don't use a 40 pin cable.

[Wayne]

Thanks for the welcome. Sorry for the confusion over the cables. It was something that was mentioned that should be checked out just in case, but as i've used similar cables in previous builds I mentioned it just to rule them out.
Thanks,
Wayne.

[absic]

Hi there,

which model Samsung Spinpoint do you actually have?

If it is a "Green" Model this could be the problem as they are better used as a storage drive rather than as a BOOT drive.

[Wayne]

It's an HD103UJ.
Cheers.

[absic]

Well the HDD shouldn't be a problem.

Having done a quick search on the internet the only things I can suggest are:
Have you checked that the SATA cable is connected firmly onto the harddrive and the motherboard?
Have you tried a different SATA cable?
Are all your drivers up-to-date especially the ones for the motherboard chipset and SATA drivers?

Which SATA port on the motherboard do you have the HDD attached to?
Are you running in AHCI or IDE mode?
What Operating System are you using?

Sorry for all the questions but the more information we can get the easier it may be to offer practical help.

[Wayne]

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
Yes, the cable is firmly connected both ends.
Yes, have tried a different cable.
According to Gigabyte all drivers are up to date.
SATA2 _4.
IDE.
XP Pro 32-bit.
I think I'll try a fresh install on another hdd I have that has never had a problem and report back.
Cheers.

[Lsdmeasap]

Green hard drives are not good to use for OS booting, I suggest you use that as storage and get something better for your OS.  Those drives power down and slow down far to much to be used for a main OS drive.

You want the OS cable connected to SATA2_0

[Wayne]

Thanks for the cable advice. As to the green drive I don't believe mine is.
Cheers.

[Lsdmeasap]

Ahh ya, sorry, I saw green mentioned above and assumed that was correct.

 I see it's a spinpoint now, so that shouldn't have the issues I mentioned.  How's this doing now?

[Wayne]

Awful.
I can't install my strategy games on Steam. I can't update my games on Steam. I get DWF's when installing some games, not all, to the hdd from the dvd drive. Sometimes if I try installing them again they install perfectly. I get interrmitent DWF's when I use the internet.  It's doing my head in to tell the truth. I think I'm about ask my retailer for a refund and go back to my old setup which hasen't missed a beat in four years. My other half has the same setup and hers hasen't played up ever, either. In fact I've built my own pc's since '95 and I've never had a problem with any of them until now.
Cheers.

[Lsdmeasap]

Can you test with another drive to rule that drive out as the cause of the issue?  If not, have you at least ran the manufacturer's testing tools to be sure the drive is fully functional and passing all tests? Since this is an old drive I'd test it for sure, in case the drive itself is the problem

Hutil
http://majorgeeks.com/Samsung_Drive_Diagnostic_Utility_Hutil_d5769.html

And run this one as well (Samsgun ES-Tool), backup the drive before using either of these though, as there is a write test that writes to the last 8MB of the drive (Not usually an issue, but backup is always advised).  Since Seagate now owns Samsung, all the Samsung links I could find are down, so you'll have to download this bootable CD with many other tools in order to use the ES-Tool for testing

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I also see this drive can be aligned to 4k sectors like SSD's, s not doing that might cause issues.   Did you do this or do you know if it was already done?  If you are not sure, please download the following benchmark and open it and select the main partition.  Do not run the benchmark, just select the drive.  Download is at the very bottom
http://alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/downloads.php?download_id=9


Why do you keep mentioning IDE?   You mentioned an 80 pin IDE ribbon cable in your first post, and again mentioned IDE in the #6 post.   Just asking to be sure, in case maybe you are using some other older IDE HDD with an adapter or something.

Did you use Express Install from the motherboard CD when you installed windows?  If so that may be the issue.  If you did that, please remove the Marvell drivers with device manager and add/remove programs.

And then update the Intel drivers

INF Chipset (First link EXE)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=816

AHCI/RAID Drivers (you want third link EXE)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=eng&ProductFamily=Chipsets&ProductLine=Chipset+Software&ProductProduct=Intel%C2%AE+Rapid+Storage+Technology

[Wayne]

Thanks for pointing me to the utilities. I'll download and give them a whirl first. Funny you should mention testing with another drive, I ordered another one today. Should have it in sometime next week and I'll and see if that makes a difference if necessary. If I remember correctly with all this going on the bios is in IDE mode not AHCI, I'll recheck. I'll remove the Marvell drivers as per your advice and update the Intel drivers. Thanks for all your help, it is really appreciated. I'll be in touch.
Cheers.

[Lsdmeasap]

Great to hear you have another drive on the way!   That would have been the first thing I tested, of course you need a second drive to do that, so nice to hear you already thought of that and ordered one.   I bet that is the issue!

Good luck, hopefully the new drive will sort this out for you!  You want AHCI mode when you install, IDE mode is slow.

Keep us posted once the new drive arrive, thanks!

[Wayne]

Back again.
Been trying out a new drive in the computer which has been working fine until tonight. Installing a game I'm getting the dreaded "Delayed Write Failures" again. Tried installing the same game on my old pc, not a problem, installs absolutely fine. Back on the new mobo DWF's all over the place. I think I'm about to give up on Gigabyte. I think it may be time to try and get a refund on this mobo. What do you think.
Cheers.