Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P and new hard drives...

[ericlp]

I bought 2 new hard drives 1 TB Hitachi drives....

I was currently running winXP and loaded in Win 7 on the one of the new drives. Everything seems to work ok but sometimes the motherboard just out of the blue won't see the two new drives. Then I reboot ... unplug the SATA connector and plug them back in. Restart the computer and see's the drives again.

My questions are...

1) do I have to load any special drivers for this mother board with Windows 7?

2) Could it be the SATA cables? They are cheap.

This is really annoying problem. Maybe the motherboard bios needs to be updated for 1TB drives? seems the 500Gig always get's recognized.

Thanks for looking and helping me out.

 

[lopri]

Since it comes and go, it's not likely the drivers. Can it be the cables? Yes, but again not very likely unless you see physical damage on the cables.

Other possibilities:

1) Your board is not getting enough power.
2) Your board's south bridge is overheated.
3) Your HDD is not getting enough power. (Some HDDs can consume up to 20W+ at the startup)

If 2) isn't the case, you can try giving slightly more voltages to the board's south bridge. But I'm more inclined to believe it's your PSU that's not up to the job.

 

[BTA]

1. Don't buy Hitachi

2. Try only hooking up one of the TB drives at a time (take power and sata plugs off). See how that works. I'd agree with power being the likely issue.

 

[seemingly random]

I've started paying more attention to the windows event manager (run eventvwr.msc). I've noticed several errors with bios's from gigabyte mb's (965gm and 780g). I just ordered an ep45ud3p and will immediately update the bios if there's a newer one.

Win7 is running on several pc's and I've not noticed any requirement differences from vista or xp. I've had several problems with big drives from wdc and samsung, though. Big drive reliability is a crap shoot. I would say there is a one in three or four chance that you'll get a bad drive. Some folks have bad drives and don't know it yet. When I get event 28 (The driver detected a controller error on \Device\HarddiskX), the drive gets returned.

I've just started seeing a "corrupted bios" event after S3 wakeup on the 965gm/8800gtx pc. I haven't determined if this refers to the mb or the gpu yet.

During testing of a recently received wd750 black "newegg special", the drive became unready during burn in. For burn in, I just write zeros to every sector (hd tune pro) and then do a non-quick windows format and then some performance tests. I haven't chased down the problem with it yet. I will swap sata and power cables with known good ones and maybe try a different pc.

 

[ericlp]

MB = Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P
4 gigs of ram
2 NEC CD/DVD burners IDE...
1 Maxtor 500Gig, (always get detected)
2 Hitachi 1TB drives ... flaky. Tho, using now. HDT721010sla360 ATA Device
PS is a corsair 650 xt
Video = Nvidia Gforce GTX 260

I got USB keyboard, Mouse and Magic Jack plugged in for USB power.

I dunno, I heard that a 650Watt PS will make a lot of fan noise when it's under a load, so far my PS is running super quiet.

Maybe it is my P/S. I don't see why a TB drive would cause any problems ... Just out of the blue it will stop detecting the TB drives. While the maxtor drive is fine. I don't buy that Hitachidrives are SHIT, since that get such good reviews.

I do thank all that replied. Welcome more feedback...

Thanks Guys as I'm still having problems and haven't resolved it yet.

I've just never had a drive be recognized format and install windows with out a problem then 3-5 days later just die out of the blue.

I took the second drive off line and unplugged power and SATA cable to see if maybe it will last longer.

 

[seemingly random]

Another thing you might try is booting and running the hitachi drive fitness util from a cd with only the cd, empty hitachi hd, kb and monitor attached to eliminate variables.

 

[ericlp]

Another thing you might try is booting and running the hitachi drive fitness util from a cd with only the cd, empty hitachi hd, kb and monitor attached to eliminate variables.

I used the drives fitness test and came back with errors.

I'm wondering... If you have 1 bad drive on a USB chain can that cause other drives to just drop off and not show up? Looks like I'll be calling Hitachi for a replacement drive.

Strange stuff.

Thanks for all your replies.

Moral of the story. BACK UP YOUR DATA. Not like I lost any data and the reason I got two drives was to back up important data with robocopy.

Good luck to you guys and may your data be safe....

 

[seemingly random]

I used the drives fitness test and came back with errors.

I'm wondering... If you have 1 bad drive on a USB chain can that cause other drives to just drop off and not show up? Looks like I'll be calling Hitachi for a replacement drive.

Strange stuff.

Thanks for all your replies.

Moral of the story. BACK UP YOUR DATA. Not like I lost any data and the reason I got two drives was to back up important data with robocopy.

Good luck to you guys and may your data be safe....

I assume you tested with drive fitness via sata. Hopefully, the current big drive failure rate isn't greater than 50%.

I received replacements for two samsungs 1.5tb and a wdc 1tb a week ago and have been happy so far.

usb2.0 drive speed is too slow so have no experience with usb 'chaining' except with a keyboard and mouse.