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What could cause this hard drive corruption?

RebateMonger

RebateMonger

Elite Member
I'm helping a friend out by upgrading a PC for little money, I volunteered a new ECS GF7050VT-M motherboard (Socket 775 with NVidia MCP73V chipset), a new Intel E2180 processor, some known-good memory, and a pair of used IDE hard drives.

The problem is that this rig has corrupted its hard drive twice now. I installed XP Pro SP2 from the existing DVD drive onto a used (but functional) 40 GB WD hard drive. The install went perfectly and the PC survived installation of a couple of games. Then, while installing a game, the PC suddenly scrambled the hard drive. Rebooting gave a "corrupted or missing system file" message.

Extensive testing of the memory (Memtest 86+) and of the WD hard drive (WD's Disk Diagnostics) showed zero problems. A "Chkdsk /r" command found corrupted files (index files), but no bad sectors.

Not knowing where the problem was, I swapped the hard drive for a Seagate 40 GB drive. I ran a full "Chkdsk /r" on the second hard drive before using it and, again, no bad sectors or even any logical errors were found.

This second XP install was also uneventful. I was able to fully update XP, install antivirus, and install some basic utilities. The PC ran for a full day with no visible errors and no errors reported in the System Event Log. The next day, an attempt to install a (different) game again scrambled the hard drive. Same problem: a corrupt or missing Windows system file.

------------------------------------------------------------

I'm hoping that somebody has seen this problem before or has other suggestions.

I'm thinking:
a) Hard drive controller failure
b) Bad IDE cable (shared between the DVD and the hard drive, since there's only a single IDE connector onboard)
c) Failing DVD drive (it's eight years old) that's corrupting the signals on the single IDE data cable, corrupting the hard drive during the game installs
d) General motherboard failure
e) Power supply failure
f) Bad Nvidia board drivers (I used the drivers that came with the (new) motherboard)

Unfortunately, I didn't change the IDE controller cable after the first failure, so I can't be sure that it's not defective.

The DVD drive seems to be OK (the XP installs and a couple of game installs went fine), but I worry about an eight-year-old DVD drive.

------------------------------------------

I'm hoping to get this working properly for somebody's Christmas present, so if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd appreciate it. Thanks -- RebateMonger.
 
I had a problem similar to this with an old PowerMac G3. Those had well-documented problems with the IDE controller that caused hard drive corruption like you describe, but I also had a bad IDE cable. The cable is probably the cheapest and easiest thing to replace, so I would start there.

Also, is this system overclocked at all? You commented in my own support thread, in which I had data corruption that may have stemmed from overclocked RAM not receiving enough voltage. If it's OC'd, back off to stock settings. If it's not, then I would suspect the PSU.

I don't think the age of the DVD drive would cause this issue for you. I could see a mechanical failure that would stop it from reading, but you've reported no problems installing XP and several games from the drive.

Might also want to install latest BIOS and mobo drivers from the manufacturer's site, if possible.
 
I've had similar problems with many IDE systems. They've usually been fixed by replacing the cable or jiggling the connectors until it works. Then I never ever touch the drives or cables again. I hate those damn 80 skinny wire cables. I also had a computer that would always eventually scramble / give many errors no matter what I did. An obscure BIOS update solved that problem.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I'm helping a friend out by upgrading a PC for little money, I volunteered a new ECS GF7050VT-M motherboard (Socket 775 with NVidia MCP73V chipset), a new Intel E2180 processor, some known-good memory, and a pair of used IDE hard drives.

The problem is that this rig has corrupted its hard drive twice now. I installed XP Pro SP2 from the existing DVD drive onto a used (but functional) 40 GB WD hard drive. The install went perfectly and the PC survived installation of a couple of games. Then, while installing a game, the PC suddenly scrambled the hard drive. Rebooting gave a "corrupted or missing system file" message.

Extensive testing of the memory (Memtest 86+) and of the WD hard drive (WD's Disk Diagnostics) showed zero problems. A "Chkdsk /r" command found corrupted files (index files), but no bad sectors.

Not knowing where the problem was, I swapped the hard drive for a Seagate 40 GB drive. I ran a full "Chkdsk /r" on the second hard drive before using it and, again, no bad sectors or even any logical errors were found.

This second XP install was also uneventful. I was able to fully update XP, install antivirus, and install some basic utilities. The PC ran for a full day with no visible errors and no errors reported in the System Event Log. The next day, an attempt to install a (different) game again scrambled the hard drive. Same problem: a corrupt or missing Windows system file.

------------------------------------------------------------

I'm hoping that somebody has seen this problem before or has other suggestions.

I'm thinking:
a) Hard drive controller failure
b) Bad IDE cable (shared between the DVD and the hard drive, since there's only a single IDE connector onboard)
c) Failing DVD drive (it's eight years old) that's corrupting the signals on the single IDE data cable, corrupting the hard drive during the game installs
d) General motherboard failure
e) Power supply failure
f) Bad Nvidia board drivers (I used the drivers that came with the (new) motherboard)

Unfortunately, I didn't change the IDE controller cable after the first failure, so I can't be sure that it's not defective.

The DVD drive seems to be OK (the XP installs and a couple of game installs went fine), but I worry about an eight-year-old DVD drive.

------------------------------------------

I'm hoping to get this working properly for somebody's Christmas present, so if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd appreciate it. Thanks -- RebateMonger.
Click to expand...


What are your temps? Got any overheating?

 
Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. I only had one more chance to make this work, so I put in a PCI IDE controller (Promise Ultra TX2), new IDE cables, and a CDROM drive. When I was installing some ECS drivers, the old DVD drive had some read errors, so I figured it'd be best to toss it rather than take a chance that it was causing the corruption.

So far, the new install is working. I'll report back if it's fixed, or if I find the true cause.

Thanks again - RebateMonger
 
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