Solved! When Disk Drives go bad...

[dave_the_nerd]

A low level format will block off bad sectors... but by the time you start noticing bad sectors, a drive is so far gone it's like a termianl cancer patient. Sure, certain things might make them live a little longer, but honestly it's only a matter of time.

 

[Craig234]

A low level format will block off bad sectors... but by the time you start noticing bad sectors, a drive is so far gone it's like a termianl cancer patient. Sure, certain things might make them live a little longer, but honestly it's only a matter of time.

Ya, it's to the point I can't log into some things, others take retries, and web pages take a long time or time out, so I'm using a different browser on the SSD instead. I posted the HD I'm thinking of buying interested in feedback, but no posts yet.

 

[dlerious]

@aigomorla ,. you ever put your Steam drive on a NAS server? How well does that work out? Wondering if that might be a solution for @Craig234 ?

I've been thinking about something similar with NAS or external HDD, but as a library drive instead of a game drive, so I can install/uninstall from local instead of over internet.

 

[FaaR]

I posted the HD I'm thinking of buying interested in feedback, but no posts yet.

Unless you have any particular special needs, just buy any drive that fits your capacity and performance requirements, as well as budget. It really doesn't matter sufficiently to make any noticeable difference as an end user.

If you need to do a lot of writing to the drive, especially random writes, you may want to avoid any drive using shingled recording, but other than that I wouldn't much care; HDDs are always going to be relatively slow no matter what, and even shingled drives are still faster than almost all internet connections, so you should most likely not notice any slowdown when downloading new stuff to the drive. Assuming this will be a primarily games storage drive, that is.

Just hurry. A HDD throwing disk errors is like a terminal cancer patient; a walking disaster to happen. It really could croak completely at any time. Seriously, I'd suggest disconnecting it entirely until you have a replacement drive purchased and installed. I'm like, why haven't you done that already? Unless, you don't really care about any of the data on that drive of course, and would just prefer to keep your stuff merely for convenience...

If there's anything on that drive that is the least itty bitty bit important to you, BACK IT UP NOW and then disconnect the drive,

 

[Craig234]

This will be a shock, but buying a replacement HD has not gone without an issue. I thought it had. I'd re-installed about 20 games, no problem.

Then tonight, a game needed an update in Steam - but was stopped with 'disk write error'. Oh, crap. That's what I saw when the previous drive went bad. I pressed to try again, another write error. Maybe 5 times I pressed, and finally it complete. That's not what you want to see on your new drive, even though it's fine on everything else.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hmm, honestly, that's kind of suspicious that you're getting "Disk Write Errors" AGAIN, with a "new" HDD. (Is it truly new? Did you check POH - Power On Hours, with CrystalDiskInfo? If it's showing more than 100 hours on-time, and you haven't owned/used it for more than a couple of days, then it's not "new".)

For S&G, I would change out the SATA cable, maybe all of them in your rig. For some unknown reason, they have a tendency to go bad after a while, or after an upgrade. (Yanking on cables?)

I have a supply, I stock up when Newegg has them for $0.49 or $0.59 ea., for the 18-in ones with metal latches, and replace mine sometimes when I replace a drive, if it's an important rig that I care if it has errors or not. (My mining rigs, with a boot SSD, I don't care as much about, as that storage system is just to boot and non-critical for data.)

 

[UsandThem]

Hmm, honestly, that's kind of suspicious that you're getting "Disk Write Errors" AGAIN, with a "new" HDD. (Is it truly new? Did you check POH - Power On Hours, with CrystalDiskInfo?

+++

This is why I recommended early on in this thread to run a drive utility to see the drive's health. For all we know, the problems could be memory errors. CPU issues, or something else. Whenever possible, I have found that following the "K.I.S.S." method is the way to go (especially when troubleshooting computer issues).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Both Seagate and Western Digital have free utilities to find out the drive's current health.

Otherwise, you can always use a 3rd party utility like CrystalDiskInfo.

Thanks, but I have a pretty good idea of the health from the write errors

Hmm. Starting to see a theme here, between this thread, and the "other thread".

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ya, it's to the point I can't log into some things, others take retries, and web pages take a long time or time out, so I'm using a different browser on the SSD instead.

Is it possible that the SSD is actually the drive that is failing?

Craig, download CrystalDiskInfo and post screenshots of the stats on both drives, the SSD and the (new) HDD.

Edit: The other possibility is that your PSU is going bad, and it killed your prior GPU, and your prior game HDD. Along with possibly the SSD being unaffected, because it runs off of the +5V rather than the +12V.

 

[Craig234]

Is it possible that the SSD is actually the drive that is failing?

Craig, download CrystalDiskInfo and post screenshots of the stats on both drives, the SSD and the (new) HDD.

Edit: The other possibility is that your PSU is going bad, and it killed your prior GPU, and your prior game HDD. Along with possibly the SSD being unaffected, because it runs off of the +5V rather than the +12V.

Well, here's the deal. The GPU and HD definitely did go bad. The disk write error was on an update of a game installed on the (new) HD. The PS DID go bad, perhaps 18 months ago, and I bought a new one. I don't know a way to test that.

 

[Craig234]

Hmm. Starting to see a theme here, between this thread, and the "other thread".

What theme? A suggestion was made how to check the health of the drive; the drive was barely functioning by then, so there wasn't a question about its health.

 

[Craig234]

Here's some output from crystaldiskinfo:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskInfo 8.5.2 (C) 2008-2020 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18362] (x86)
Date : 2020/06/12 3:39:07
-- Controller Map ----------------------------------------------------------
+ Asmedia 106x SATA Controller [SCSI]
- WDC WD6003FZBX-00K5W SCSI Disk Device
- Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller [SCSI]
+ Asmedia 106x SATA Controller [SCSI]
- Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
- TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-222AL SCSI CdRom Device
-- Disk List ---------------------------------------------------------------
(1) WDC WD6003FZBX-00K5WB0 : 6001.1 GB [0/0/0, pd1] - wd
(2) Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB : 500.1 GB [1/1/0, pd1] - sg
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) WDC WD6003FZBX-00K5WB0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : WDC WD6003FZBX-00K5WB0
Firmware : 01.01A01
Serial Number : V9G9452L
Disk Size : 6001.1 GB (8.4/137.4/6001.1/6001.1)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 11721045168
Rotation Rate : 7200 RPM
Interface : Serial ATA
Major Version : ACS-2
Minor Version : ATA8-ACS version 4
Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 129 hours
Power On Count : 1 count
Temperature : 39 C (102 F)
Health Status : Good
Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, 48bit LBA, NCQ
APM Level : 00FEh [ON]
AAM Level : ----
Drive Letter : E:
-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
01 100 100 _16 000000000000 Read Error Rate
02 132 132 _54 000000000060 Throughput Performance
03 100 100 _24 000700000000 Spin-Up Time
04 100 100 __0 000000000001 Start/Stop Count
05 100 100 __5 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors Count
07 100 100 _67 000000000000 Seek Error Rate
08 128 128 _20 000000000012 Seek Time Performance
09 100 100 __0 000000000081 Power-On Hours
0A 100 100 _60 000000000000 Spin Retry Count
0C 100 100 __0 000000000001 Power Cycle Count
C0 100 100 __0 000000000006 Power-off Retract Count
C1 100 100 __0 000000000006 Load/Unload Cycle Count
C2 141 141 __0 002A00190027 Temperature
C4 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reallocation Event Count
C5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector Count
C6 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector Count
C7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model : Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB
Firmware : EMT01B6Q
Serial Number : S21HNXAG646280L
Disk Size : 500.1 GB (8.4/137.4/500.1/500.1)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 976773168
Rotation Rate : ---- (SSD)
Interface : Serial ATA
Major Version : ACS-2
Minor Version : ATA8-ACS version 4c
Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 26449 hours
Power On Count : 496 count
Host Writes : 68346 GB
Wear Level Count : 141
Temperature : 40 C (104 F)
Health Status : Good (100 %)
Features : S.M.A.R.T., 48bit LBA, NCQ, TRIM, DevSleep
APM Level : ----
AAM Level : ----
Drive Letter : C:
-- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------
ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name
05 100 100 _10 000000000000 Reallocated Sector Count
09 _94 _94 __0 000000006751 Power-on Hours
0C _99 _99 __0 0000000001F0 Power-on Count
B1 _93 _93 __0 00000000008D Wear Leveling Count
B3 100 100 _10 000000000000 Used Reserved Block Count (Total)
B5 100 100 _10 000000000000 Program Fail Count (Total)
B6 100 100 _10 000000000000 Erase Fail Count (Total)
B7 100 100 _10 000000000000 Runtime Bad Block (Total)
BB 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Error Count
BE _60 _52 __0 000000000028 Airflow Temperature
C3 200 200 __0 000000000000 ECC Error Rate
C7 100 100 __0 000000000000 CRC Error Count
EB _99 _99 __0 000000000179 POR Recovery Count
F1 _99 _99 __0 00215F5E01B0 Total LBAs Written

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks, Craig. Well, neither of those stats show either the HDD or SSD has any bad blocks or errors that I can see.

I would look into doing a bootable RAM test next, using Memtest86 (+?), and a USB stick, and let that run overnight.

If that turns out OK, then try doing an OCCT: PSU TEST. If THAT turns out OK, then I would possibly consider getting a new drive for the OS (at least temp), and doing a fresh install of Windows. It's possible that you have permission problems on your drive or something.

It doesn't appear (from the SMART data) that your new HDD is somehow obviously going bad, which makes me wonder what is UP here.

Does it make any clicking sounds while writing, like it's resetting and sending the heads back to the track 0 / back-stop? That's more of a "clank" than the normal "click-clack" of back-and-forth seeking and writing. If you can even hear that, most modern drives are fairly quiet, and you might need the case sides off to even hear that.

 

[Craig234]

Thanks, Craig. Well, neither of those stats show either the HDD or SSD has any bad blocks or errors that I can see.

I would look into doing a bootable RAM test next, using Memtest86 (+?), and a USB stick, and let that run overnight.

If that turns out OK, then try doing an OCCT: PSU TEST. If THAT turns out OK, then I would possibly consider getting a new drive for the OS (at least temp), and doing a fresh install of Windows. It's possible that you have permission problems on your drive or something.

It doesn't appear (from the SMART data) that your new HDD is somehow obviously going bad, which makes me wonder what is UP here.

Does it make any clicking sounds while writing, like it's resetting and sending the heads back to the track 0 / back-stop? That's more of a "clank" than the normal "click-clack" of back-and-forth seeking and writing. If you can even hear that, most modern drives are fairly quiet, and you might need the case sides off to even hear that.

Thanks; no unusual noises, and I have had the sides of the case off a long time. I question permissions, because retries got past the errors, and I suspect it'd be a different error message. Those other tests are probably a bit more than I'm up for. There have been no more errors since that one program.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's not a Z68 motherboard, is it? Those had a recall, the early ones, to be replaced with a B1 or B2-stepping chipset, to fix an issue, where the SATA ports would get weak and fail, due to a faulty transistor.

Regardless, that's an Intel-chipset mobo, right? CrystalDiskInfo is reporting that your HDD and SSD are both on ASMedia ports, using a SCSIPORT controller driver (I think).

Do you have other SATA ports on the board that you could use? Maybe less convenient, but I'm wondering if using chipset-native ports would alleviate the problem. Or update your ASMedia disk controller drivers.

 

[Craig234]

That's not a Z68 motherboard, is it? Those had a recall, the early ones, to be replaced with a B1 or B2-stepping chipset, to fix an issue, where the SATA ports would get weak and fail, due to a faulty transistor.

Regardless, that's an Intel-chipset mobo, right? CrystalDiskInfo is reporting that your HDD and SSD are both on ASMedia ports, using a SCSIPORT controller driver (I think).

Do you have other SATA ports on the board that you could use? Maybe less convenient, but I'm wondering if using chipset-native ports would alleviate the problem. Or update your ASMedia disk controller drivers.

I don't know some of that info; it's an ASRock Z97 Extreme MB. I'll load and run my driver update program I guess, just in case.

 

[Craig234]

It happened again; installed a game, no problem, installed another and it stopped with a disk write error (from Steam). I clicked update once and it immediately completed.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My advice would be to get those drives (SSD and HDD) OFF of the ASMedia ports, and onto the Intel SATA6G ports. Also, make sure that you are using SATA6G-certified cables, not just any old red SATA cables that came with some Via SATA controller card from 2000.

 

[Craig234]

My advice would be to get those drives (SSD and HDD) OFF of the ASMedia ports, and onto the Intel SATA6G ports. Also, make sure that you are using SATA6G-certified cables, not just any old red SATA cables that came with some Via SATA controller card from 2000.

Here's a list of the ports on the MB, which are you suggesting should be used, and which used now?

ASROCK Z97 Extreme6 User Manual (Page 14 of 129) | ManualsLib

www.manualslib.com

How can I tell if there are the 'right' SATA cables? They're certainly black, not red.

This stuff is all much more modern than 2000.

 

[VirtualLarry]

10

SATA3 Connectors (SATA3_A3_A4)

11

SATA3 Connectors (SATA3_A1_A2)

12

SATA3 Connectors (SATA3_0_3)

13

SATA3 Connectors (SATA3_1_4)

14

SATA3 Connectors (SATA3_2_5

The SATA3_A3_A4 and SATA3_A1_A2 are ASMedia ports. Those should be considered secondary. For whatever reason, it appears that you are connected to some of those ports right now, and are having Disk Write Errors, which could be caused by (the ASMedia) drivers.

SATA3_0_3, SATA3_1_4, SATA3_2_5 should all be Intel chipset-native SATA6G ports. I would highly recommend connecting your SSD to SATA3_0, and your HDD to SATA3_1. Use any other port for a DVD drive.

See if switching them around, gets rid of the Disk Write Errors. I have a nagging feeling that might eliminate your troubles, at least with this particular issue.

 

[Craig234]

I'll take a look at that. If this wasn't enough, I'm seeing programs occasionally crash. Steam crashed, gog galaxy crashed. It wasn't happening while I was using them until today, world of tanks crashed in a game. I've also been seeing some programs 'freeze', you can see them but not interact with them, and others which get blank screens. Something weird is happening, but it's like once a day.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My laptop (A4-9120e AMD APU) running Win10 Home, got the 2020-06 Cumulative Update for 1909 yesterday, and today, it didn't want to boot up. I had to force power-off.

I wonder if there are some issues with recent Windows Updates? Not saying that you don't possibly have a hardware problem too, but it could be Windows Update. Did your 2020-06 CU come in yesterday or today?

 

[Craig234]

I wonder if there are some issues with recent Windows Updates? Not saying that you don't possibly have a hardware problem too, but it could be Windows Update. Did your 2020-06 CU come in yesterday or today?

No, about a week ago there was a patch, but haven't seen any since.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Have you taken a look at Reliability Monitor? What does it show? Any particular date these issues all started to happen?

 

[Craig234]

I'll take a look. In the meantime, the unusual issues are getting more frequent. Elder Scrolls Online won't start at all, with a variety of errors from directx version to application crash and others to a hang in the loading screen. Another game had a button indicate it was being pressed, but it did not do anything, and I had to end task.