Hello,
I have the following system configuration:
- H67A-USB3-B3 Rev. 1.0
- latest stable BIOS ver. F7, most of the settings default optimum, AHCI mode, no RAID
- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz
- 2x 4GB Corsair XMS3 1333MHz, 9-9-9-24, 1.5V
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 (MSI N440GT MD1GD3/LP)
- OCZ Fatal1ty Series 550W
- Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
- Latest drivers for everything (from GB/NVIDIA/INTEL website)
- System disk:
- SATA-0: WD Velociraptor WD3000HLFS-0 (with latest fw stability patch from WD)
- Storage disks:
- SATA-1: WDC WD5000AAKS-7
- SATA-2: WDC WD5000AAKX-7
- SATA-3: WDC WD5000AAKX-7
- SATA-4: WDC WD10EAVS-00D
- SATA-5: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7260S
Problem: I have been experiencing random reboots, seemingly without BSOD, while using the PC, sometimes even 8 or 9 times a day. After the reboot, the AHCI drive detection said SMART command failed for my Velociraptor system disk.
Power it down, wait ~2-3 minutes, power on, the SMART error gone, then sometimes it would work again like nothing happened, or it would just hang at Loading OS stage.
Then it would repeat.
This happened both in idle, high load, regular load, like just running idle in Win, streaming a Youtube vid, checking mail, gaming etc. Totally random.
Diagnostics so far: I spotted in the Windows logs some errors similar to those that occur when putting a drive offline from drive manager and hot removing it from the bus. Or similar to a drive starting to fail (read/write errors etc.)
I checked all the drives thoroughly in other systems, both SMART and in actual load/usage. Also checked RAM modules. All is ok.
Replaced my system disk with a regular brand new WD Caviar Blue, fully tested before, issue occurred again (transferred an image of my system to that drive with a linux box using dd).
Reinstalled Win with the latest drivers for everything (I use the Intel AHCI driver, not the default in Win7), on the new drive, issue still there. Did this on my Raptor. Still there.
Also did a full SATA cables replacement, as the ones I had were cheap and flimsy, but this did not fix anything.
Also, my Raptor had a fw upgrade to fix an issue that caused it to do exactly this (drop-out of the bus), and I am 180% sure this worked and the drive is not the issue here. I tested it as system disk in another PC, and also read the workaround bellow and the results.
Workaround: On this board SATA-0 and -1 are 6Gb ports, and the rest are 3Gb.
Moved my system disk to SATA-2, and shifted all the others so now I have the DVD unit and the 1TB storage drive (WD10EAVS) on the SATA3 ports (0 and 1). All my drives are SATA2, so not really a problem, for now.
This seems to have fixed the issue and any disk errors are gone from Win logs, system is running smooth. Also, the storage 1TB drive seems to run fine and no drop-outs.
Conclusion/Question: Now I would like to find what actually happened there.
Is this a hw problem, anybody knows? I am puzzled as I read about the H67 SATA bug, but this is meant to affect the 3Gb ports, not the 6Gb ones, like in my case.
Is this a problem with the Intel AHCI driver I use, should I go with the generic one in Windows 7 (heard it is a bit slower in performance, wouldn't want to go this way)?
I highly appreciate any advice and ideas, I am at the end of my rope with this and, even though theoretically worked around, the issue is still there and I plan on a soon to come SATA3 new system drive (classic or SSD, this I will see at that moment). I would really like to be able to use it at it's peak performance.
Many thanks.
