SMART error on reboot, AHCI and Windows 7

Hey there,

My Windows Xp was working just fine for years but... I upgraded from my old shortstroked raid 0 to a Crucial M4 128gb.
Thought it was time to install Windows 7 64 and did it enabling AHCI in in bios and then in registry
When I restart my new Windows 7, AHCI Drive Init in displays a S.M.A.R.T. error warning for my SATA Wd Caviar 1tb and I know there´s nothing wrong with this HDD.
Everything works well in native IDE but with a performance cost.
Tested Microsoft and AMD drivers for the SATA controller with the same results, also changed SATA slots and tried disabling SMART HDD capability in bios.

Any help?

Can you grab a screenshot of the "Health" tab from the program HDTune? Make sure you have the proper drive selected.

SMART data is used to predict when a drive is about to fail. So, even though you may think the drive is perfectly fine, it may be showing signs of failure and it is trying to warn you. The program I suggested will show what data, if any, is "failing" on the drive. If I was getting SMART warnings on any of my mechanical hard drives, I would be concerned with their long term stability, would keep a backup of the data and keep a very close watch of the drive. I would also put it through rigorous tests to see if it actually fails. I would suggest not ignoring these messages.

How old is the 1TB? Is it AHCI compliant? I can't run AHCI for my SSD because either my DVD drive or my 1TB storage is not meant for AHCI or something or rather.. It actually causes me to BSOD/restart. So I leave it in IDE mode.

The disk is a Western Digital Caviar Black 1tb and it has been working great with XP, no problems at all.
Don´t know really if it´s AHCI compliant but I´ve also tested plugging it to SATA3/4 ports configured as IDE in bios (and M4 in AHCI) with same results.

All works great if I configure:
SATA0/1 Native ide
SATA3/4 Ide

If I set the bios like this, I get the SMART error in te WD on next reboot
SATA0/1 AHCI
SATA3/4 As SATA type or IDE

Interesting, I don't see anything wrong with it. I think it is giving you a false reading. I've never seen that before.

Might be worth it to see if you can get the SMART error log and see if it makes any sense.

Install smartmontools and then run smartctl (with admin privileges). Use the command: Yes, even on windows. If you have multiple hard drives you may need to change the a in hda to b or c or whichever represents the hard drive with the errors.

It seems I could isolate the problem, maybe just a bit...
Disconected the WD Caviar Black and leaved only the Crucial M4 in AHCI mode. Rebooted a few times with no preblems at all, it works -alone- like a charm.

The WD Caviar 1tb worked flawlessly in SATA mode with XP but W 7 won´t load right after AHCI loader with this HDD in SATA mode even as a second drive ( PC doesn´t hang though, keyboard works, etc )

Any ideas?

perhaps a bios update to the motherboard is needed.

I´ve replaced the 1tb WD Caviar with a 250gb Seagate and it worked in AHCI/SATA mode!
It´s weird to use a newer HDD in IDE mode and a really old one in SATA.

moonshake said:

When I restart my new Windows 7, AHCI Drive Init in displays a S.M.A.R.T. error warning for my SATA Wd Caviar 1tb and I know there´s nothing wrong with this HDD.

Click to expand...

I seen this type of problem before with a Samsung SP0802N HDD, all I did was reboot and it may have just been a warm reboot, too! On reboot, the BIOS gave a SMART warning!

It was when I was using the HDD to benchmark many Windows versions.

The cause was, even when I couldn't detect anything wrong with the HDD, the SMART went whacky, a SMART attribute data value dropped to a rediculously low number, then bounced back to a normal range!

IIRC, it was the read error rate SMART attribute.