System freezes up when accessing slave drive data

[Qacer]

I purchased a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive from ExcaliberPC a few months ago. My setup seemed to have worked properly until a few days ago.

While I was trying to access some data on the hard drive, my system froze. I restarted the OS, and everything seemed fine until I tried accessing the drive again. I can't even do a defrag, scan disk, etc. If I attempt to access the drive, it freezes up the system.

I'm running Windows XP Media Center. I'm running a 3Ghz Pentium 4 HT system. My computer is a Gateway, so I really didn't do any customization this time. The only addition to the system was a PCI-e graphics card last year.

My primary drive is also a SATA one. The Seagate drive is connected to another SATA port on the motherboard and runs as a slave drive.

Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this issue?

I tried accessing Safe Mode to see if the issue was caused by a program or service running in the background (e.g. anti-virus), but I can't even boot up to Safe Mode. It just hangs when I try booting to it.

For now, I can work with the system just fine without accessing the slave drive. But the moment I do, it freezes.

Any tips?

Thanks!

 

[robisbell]

go to Seagate's website and get their HDD diagnostic tools, you'll need to burn them to a cd and boot with it to test the drive.

 

[jackschmittusa]

If you can't boot into safe mode, I'd say there is something wrong with Windows.

 

[Qacer]

Thanks! I downloaded SeaTools from Seagate's website. I ran a few basic tests, and everything passed. So far, I have not seen the problem occur again. I wonder why it happened.

 

[robisbell]

at this point I'd suggest checking the System Event Viewer and see if there are any HDD errors listed, if none, then without any physical errors on the hardware, it may never be known. keep the cd handy in case it rears it's head again.

 

[Qacer]

I checked Event Viewer and noticed that there were disk error messages (Event 11). I looked it up at Microsoft's site and got the following:

Details
Product: Windows Operating System
ID: 11
Source: Disk
Version: 5.0
Symbolic Name: IO_ERR_CONTROLLER_ERROR
Message: The driver detected a controller error on %1.

Explanation
This problem is typically caused by a failing cable that connects the drive to the computer.


User Action
Replace the cable.



Version: 5.2
Symbolic Name: IO_ERR_CONTROLLER_ERROR
Message: The driver detected a controller error on %1.

Explanation
This problem is typically caused by a failing cable that connects the drive to the computer.


User Action
Replace the cable.



Version: 5.2.3790.1830
Message: Disk - The driver has detected a controller or cable error.

Explanation
This event indicates that I/O failures have occurred on the volume.

Cause
Possible causes include:

A hardware failure that prevents communication with a disk (for example, a loose cable, a loose disk controller card, or a cable failure).


User Action
Do one or more of the following:

Check the status of your hardware for any failures (for example, a disk, controller card, or cable failure).
Check Event Viewer for additional events from lower-level storage drivers that might indicate the cause of the failure.
Restart the computer.
Contact Microsoft Customer Service and Support.

 

[robisbell]

well, were the errors old or recent? if old and nothing has shown up since the diagnostic was run, may have been a glitch, I'd go ahead and replace the cable, and once a week run the diagnostic and keep checking the event viewer daily, if the error shows up again, after replacing the cable, then the motherboard is failing or the HDD has a bad controller board.