P8P67Pro - harddisk light constantly on

BathroomFeeling

Senior member
Apr 26, 2007
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So last week my system began to get "overloaded" with something to the point where the system becomes unresponsive apart from mouse controls, which was hard to believe as it's kick ass enough to handle average workloads. The harddisk light would be constantly on, as if it was reading/writing something, even though I had no programs running & I couldn't hear any disk activity. No biggie I thought, I looked at the Task Manager with the IO columns activated, as well as the Disk tab in the Resource Manager to see what's up. I couldn't pinpoint anything. Sometimes it was the AV, other times it was Firefox, and yet sometimes it was svchost (LocalServiceNetworkRestricted), etc... taking up *moderate* disk resources. Perplexing. The issue sometimes came up as soon as I cold booted into Windows7, so I made sure I removed almost everything I could from startup. It made no difference. So I booted into Safe Mode, should be just about as clean as one could get right? No, same problem, but not as bad. Another strange symptom was that my LiteOn DVD-RW drive would disappear from the Device Manager, which I thought was weird.

I uninstalled everything I did from the last time I remember my system was stable, Visual C++ & other junk, as well as a few Windows updates. No difference either. When I was just about to format & restore a fresh W7 backup, I thought of the SATA bug thing. My config was simple, harddisk on the SATA6G & DVD on the standard Intel SATA. As I understood it, the bug only affected the latter & not the former, which meant my harddisk was okay. So I switched the connection of my DVD-RW from the standard SATA to SATA6G and... it fixed it! No more busy lights, no more strange disk activity. So I was wondering, would the SATA bug cause this, or is something else the culprit?

PS. I won't be exchanging the mobo.
 

BathroomFeeling

Senior member
Apr 26, 2007
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I see. Rats, so I guess I'm on borrowed time once again until I update my BIOS or change my DVDRW? Thanks by the way.
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
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I just reread your original post and see now that I misinterpreted your situation - my bad

Your use of the terms "former" and "latter" turned my brain into jelly. So the answer is YES that could be the SATA 3 ports failing - with the caution it could also be bad cables/connection for DVD or bad sector(s) on HDD. Sometimes just moving stuff around "fixes things" - like a not fully inserted SATA DVD power cable.

There are posts here on AT of a user reporting his SATA II ports went bad within a week.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2140806

One should also NOT set BIOS AHCI hotswap as enabled for DVD port used, but definitely need it enabled for HDD ports. And do not use any Intel RST earlier than 10.1.0.1008 or Intel chipset 9.1.1.1027

There is a trial edition of HDDRegen avail which will fix a few bad sectors but not all if found. Best to run overnight since it takes a long time. Might be worth a shot.
http://www.dposoft.net/
http://www.gold-software.com/download7605.html

And you def want to run a chkdsk to make sure your prob didnt screw up the files system
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...n-chkdsk/a68b3e4d-1a42-e011-9767-d8d385dcbb12

Just for giggles, I would load the new 1606 BIOS and reinsert the DVD on SATA II port 6 (no hot swap), making sure all cables well seated everywhere. With ea bios, the compatibility ratio goes up.- and this bios doesnt seem to wreck anything
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1155/
 
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BathroomFeeling

Senior member
Apr 26, 2007
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Awesome thanks! I'll do everything as soon as I'm free. By the way, if I don't have an SSD, I suppose installing the Intel RST is not necessary?
 

bankster55

Golden Member
Mar 24, 2010
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Well, for one thing, the MS drivers are far less troublesome
And for your very basic config should be just fine.