So, my odyssey began in May 2012. I decided to finally build a new computer after having used my old one (with minor upgrades to it's CPU / GPU) for more than 5 years. I bought the best parts available and thought about them for quite some time.
Intel i7-3770 3.45GHz
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
Corsair DDR3 PC3-12800 - 4 x 4 GB (16 GB) 1600 MHz - CAS9
Point Of View GTX680 2GB
OCZ Agility 3 - 60GB SSD - AGT3-25SAT3-60G
OCZ Agility 3 - 180GB SSD - AGT3-25SAT3-60G
Seagate Barracuda 7200 - 2TB HDD - ST2000DM001
Corsair HX 850W PSU
So, you see: I didn't go for anything cheap. When the parcels (4) arrived I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. However, when I first started it up I noticed that something isn't right. Even the BIOS couldn't detect the 180GB SSD - dead on arrival. Long story short about this: OCZ replaced it 3 times and even the latest one is showing some reallocated blocks but it's still working fine so I won't go through this whole mess of replacing it again once more.
Shortly after the Seagate HDD started to show signs of decay. A bit early after a few weeks. Seagate never told me what happened but their tool gave me an error code: DC63CDE9. So I sent it in like 17 days ago and it's still with them because they want to "use it for quality control" - dudes, there's no quality in that thing. Anyway. A friend gave me a spare HDD of his, it's a 1.5TB Western Digital one - holding partitions E, F & G. However, this one doesn't work as it should either. It's Ultra DMA CRC Error Count is aiming high, so to say. Also, sometimes it's just randomly slowing down. And if I'm saying slow I mean internet in 1996 slow.
Partition sizes are as follows:
E:\ - 1200GB
F:\ - 1.12 GB
G:\ - 175GB
My friend (the same I got the HDD from) was kind enough to let me use his HD Tune Pro license to check what's going on. I'm not exactly a noob to solving hardware issues but I'd like to have a second (or third...or fourth) thought on the issue.
Thing is, said HDD ran fine for months until my friend didn't have enough space in his computer anymore. It was lying around for like a year or so - that didn't improve it's stability of course but there are drives in my old computer that have survived worse things. I remember not turning my computer off for 8 months straight (monthly reboot, tho). They're still going strong - despite one of them being a Seagate HDD as well.
If I play World of Warcraft, which is located on G:, it sometimes doesn't even load the environment (NPCs etc.). That's looking quite hilarious but not too funny in terms of actually playing the game.
So, what I tried so far:
- different S-ATA cable
- different S-ATA plug on my mainboard
I know that CRC errors can originate from bad RAM and bad S-ATA controllers as well but seeing that both my SSD are running fine I don't think that's the problem. Judging from the test results I believe the inner part of the HDD is fried. What I hope for is a solution and, most important, that I'm wrong.
I bought a new HDD yesterday, a 2TB Western Digital one - it's supposed to arrive tomorrow morning. This one could die shortly and I don't want to download 800GB from Steam. Not a second time.
Thanks,
Tom
Intel i7-3770 3.45GHz
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro
Corsair DDR3 PC3-12800 - 4 x 4 GB (16 GB) 1600 MHz - CAS9
Point Of View GTX680 2GB
OCZ Agility 3 - 60GB SSD - AGT3-25SAT3-60G
OCZ Agility 3 - 180GB SSD - AGT3-25SAT3-60G
Seagate Barracuda 7200 - 2TB HDD - ST2000DM001
Corsair HX 850W PSU
So, you see: I didn't go for anything cheap. When the parcels (4) arrived I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. However, when I first started it up I noticed that something isn't right. Even the BIOS couldn't detect the 180GB SSD - dead on arrival. Long story short about this: OCZ replaced it 3 times and even the latest one is showing some reallocated blocks but it's still working fine so I won't go through this whole mess of replacing it again once more.
Shortly after the Seagate HDD started to show signs of decay. A bit early after a few weeks. Seagate never told me what happened but their tool gave me an error code: DC63CDE9. So I sent it in like 17 days ago and it's still with them because they want to "use it for quality control" - dudes, there's no quality in that thing. Anyway. A friend gave me a spare HDD of his, it's a 1.5TB Western Digital one - holding partitions E, F & G. However, this one doesn't work as it should either. It's Ultra DMA CRC Error Count is aiming high, so to say. Also, sometimes it's just randomly slowing down. And if I'm saying slow I mean internet in 1996 slow.
Partition sizes are as follows:
E:\ - 1200GB
F:\ - 1.12 GB
G:\ - 175GB
My friend (the same I got the HDD from) was kind enough to let me use his HD Tune Pro license to check what's going on. I'm not exactly a noob to solving hardware issues but I'd like to have a second (or third...or fourth) thought on the issue.
Thing is, said HDD ran fine for months until my friend didn't have enough space in his computer anymore. It was lying around for like a year or so - that didn't improve it's stability of course but there are drives in my old computer that have survived worse things. I remember not turning my computer off for 8 months straight (monthly reboot, tho). They're still going strong - despite one of them being a Seagate HDD as well.
If I play World of Warcraft, which is located on G:, it sometimes doesn't even load the environment (NPCs etc.). That's looking quite hilarious but not too funny in terms of actually playing the game.
So, what I tried so far:
- different S-ATA cable
- different S-ATA plug on my mainboard
I know that CRC errors can originate from bad RAM and bad S-ATA controllers as well but seeing that both my SSD are running fine I don't think that's the problem. Judging from the test results I believe the inner part of the HDD is fried. What I hope for is a solution and, most important, that I'm wrong.
I bought a new HDD yesterday, a 2TB Western Digital one - it's supposed to arrive tomorrow morning. This one could die shortly and I don't want to download 800GB from Steam. Not a second time.
Thanks,
Tom
