Hard drive hangs Windows

[CP5670]

I have an old WD 250GB SATA drive with XP on it, and Windows 8.1 on a separate SSD. The WD drive occasionally soft-hangs 8.1, with the program accessing the drive locking up indefinitely, but other things work fine. If I restart, the BIOS hangs when trying to detect this drive, but things return to normal if I unplug and replug the drive.

The issue is very sporadic and rare in practice, but I can usually get it to occur by copying a large amount of data (a couple GB) between the drives in 8.1. It never happens in XP so I don't think there is anything wrong with the drive, but it only happens with this drive. The SATA controller is on AHCI mode (Asus P6T SE), and I have tried changing the SATA port and cable with no luck.

Has anyone seen something like this? The only similar report I could find was this one. I was thinking of just getting a new drive and copying everything onto that, but am not sure if that is even the issue and how XP (which I want to keep around for compatibility reasons) handles the modern 4K drives.

 

[nickbits]

Yes, when the driving is failing and needs to be replaced. Any odd noises when it locks?

 

[CP5670]

No, it doesn't make any noises. The HD light stays on for a while but then goes off.

Since it only happens in 8.1, I wonder if it's some issue with the SATA/AHCI driver in 8.1. I have the stock MS driver in 8.1, but XP is using the Intel AHCI driver.

 

[C1]

"but XP is using the Intel AHCI driver"

AHCI is not native to XP (on any install). Did you install the AHCI driver manually (it can be done, but its still a specialty). Also, what happens if you turn off AHCI for this controller in the BIOS (eg, does the problem go away?).

It is easy enough to download SeaTools and test the HDD. SeaTools is able to reallocate bad sectors (ie, do disk repair).

Another possibility is to transfer the data temporarily from the HDD, then "WIPE" the HDD, partition and reformat then transfer back the data.

 

[CP5670]

Yes, I installed that manually on XP a while ago (the iastor.sys driver). I haven't tried turning off AHCI altogether, but that will just prevent both OSs from booting from what I'm reading, now that they are set up for AHCI.

I'll try out Seatools. Does that do the same things as chkdsk?

 

[Elixer]

I am betting when that happens, that you will have errors/warnings in the event viewer.
Check those, and see what it says.

You should also check the drive's SMART attributes with something like crystaldiskinfo to see if it shows any issues.

 

[C1]

No, SeaTools' concern is the drive's physical integrity (not the data on it). Initially it will look at SMART and the short test checks for major issues.

You should end up running the long scan which performs a detailed non-destructive (to your data) evaluation. If you have bad data (ie, fragmented files) then that remains as is.

 

[CP5670]

The SMART readings all look good, but there doesn't seem to be anything relevant in the event viewer. If this lockup occurs while copying files, chkdsk often finds errors after rebooting (not necessarily on this drive, but on the other drive being copied to), but is able to recover everything.

I'll try running SeaTools on it. It's probably best to do that in XP if the goal is to rule out any issues with the drive itself.

 

[phis6]

Since it only happens in 8.1, I wonder if it's some issue with the SATA/AHCI driver in 8.1. I have the stock MS driver in 8.1, but XP is using the Intel AHCI driver.

Have you tried installing IRST drivers in Windows 8.1 instead of using the native MS drivers?

 

[CP5670]

That might have actually fixed this, thanks. The latest RST package doesn't work with my board, but after digging around a bit I found an older one that does. I tried doing some of the same things that were causing hangs earlier, and so far there have been no problems.