One of my raptors stops spinning every once in a while...

[IBdaMac]

As you can see from my system specs, I have two raptors in a Raid 0 array. I have had no problems what so ever with both of them for a few months.

Every once in a while, while just listening to music in Windows my computer freezes completely...It will freeze for about 30 seconds, then all of a sudden I hear the sound of a HD starting up and then everything resumes as normal.

I have both the SATA power connector, and the regular power going to both of these raptors. I have an Antec True 480W PSU so I don't think that's the problem.

I'm hoping it's the motherboard because I'm going to replace it anyway, but is there ANY possibility that this could be software related? I've installed a voltage monitor but I don't know if it will tell me anything since the computer freezes completely when it happens.

I have another 120gb HD but if that failed, I don't think Windows would freeze. (I can't really tell which HD is stopping)

I had this happen to me when I was trying to play a game after a bad installation of windows...(I installed the video drivers before the AGP drivers and things like that). Every time I would play the game, it would stop the HD, I would hear it start up every like 10 seconds and the game would freeze for a second or two. That's what makes me think this is software related.

Someone please help!!

 

[orion7144]

What OS? Are you sure you don't have any of the power sayving features turned on (in the BIOS or OS)? At least the Raptors have a 5 year warranty.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Try a different Power Connector (molex) to the suspect drive.

I have been noticing lately a lot of failure on with the connections with
the Antec PSU's and others. Poor crimps on the wires that open when the temp rises
in the case.

 

[Cheetah8799]

I had something like this here at work a little while back. My coworkers added a 2nd hard drive and cdrw to a desktop which only had a 250W power supply. I think the psu was going bad and would sometimes power down a drive, then power it back up. I replaced the psu and it worked fine after that.

 

[IBdaMac]

does it matter if I use the molex connector or the SATA power to the SATA hard drives?

 

[boomerang]

You are not supposed to hook up both power connectors. One or the other, not both!

Read this. You may have already damaged the drives.

 

[IBdaMac]

Holy crap I'm such an idiot....

I definitely only have one of them hooked up to them now...but do you think tihs problem could be related to heat?

I only ask because my front 120mm fan stopped spinning for some reason and the drives were hot to the touch. I have the fan running now but could this have been caused by heat?

 

[amdskip]

Heat will just make a drive fail faster in my experiences but I've never seen one flat out fail because it got too hot.

 

[IBdaMac]

Well, I had to go to work before I could get everything the way it should be and when I got home I had the blue screen of death saying "Unmountable_boot_volume"

So I rebuilt the file system, hooked that fan up, unhooked the extra molex power connectors and it seems to be running great now. Touching them I can feel that they're not too hot to touch so that's always good.

Lets just hope it runs this good permanently.

 

[IBdaMac]

what benefit does the SATA power offer over the regular molex?

 

[lobadobadingdong]

the sata power connectors offer hot swap support (your sata controller and hdd must both support hot swapping), regular molex doesn't without a special adapter/cariage.