Failing... HDD? No. What is failing then...?

[Deleted member 94297]

I couldn't think of a better title, sorry...
Recently my friend has given away 2 hard drives to me, so I put them in and made a 3 HDD RAID-0. I installed the system, everything was okay for about 6 hours. The system was on heavy HDD usage - Windows installation, software installation, downloads, etc. Then my computer started to freeze for a a second every 10-30 minutes. I started to worry, so I checked S.M.A.R.T. status, and everything was in order. At that point - my PC wasn't on a heavy HDD usage, only downloading some files at approximately 2mb/s, which is pretty much nothing for the HDD. After few more hours, the PC started to freeze every 1-2 seconds for 10-30 minutes. After I restart it - it is back to normal until I resume the download again.
During those freezes, I couldn't hear the HDDs working, nor the indicator on the case showed any HDD activity. So basically - HDDs stopped working. I took out one of them, reinstalled the system without the RAID, and it still was the same (but only when on heavier load than system installation). Then I took out the second HDD, and left only one with the system. And so it isn't freezing, but according to HDD testing I did, the read/write speed is jumping from 5 to 60 megs every few seconds during the test. I'm not doing anything else with my computer during the test.

So I'm wondering what exactly could cause that? When there's been 3 HDDs - maybe my degraded PSU which came with my case and originally is 420W.
And it isn't a HDD failure, since HDDs are working okay when they are singled out.
Also my CPU is working fine on full load, memory is working fine on full load either...

 

[Bag-o-doughnuts]

You definitely have some strange issues... Do you have the latest chipset driver? Change the SATA cables?

 

[EarthDog]

SOunds almost like a TLER issue to me. What kind of drives are you using in this 3 drive R0 setup, Western Digital?

 

[Bag-o-doughnuts]

SOunds almost like a TLER issue to me. What kind of drives are you using in this 3 drive R0 setup, Western Digital?

He said it happen in or out of a RAID setup...

reinstalled the system without the RAID, and it still was the same (but only when on heavier load than system installation)

 

[EarthDog]

Funny another line says otherwise...:

And it isn't a HDD failure, since HDDs are working okay when they are singled out.

Which is it?

 

[Deleted member 94297]

You definitely have some strange issues... Do you have the latest chipset driver? Change the SATA cables?

Always do, lol.
Yea, latest chipset driver for my mobo, which is quite old. And yes, I've tried changing both cables and slots.

SOunds almost like a TLER issue to me. What kind of drives are you using in this 3 drive R0 setup, Western Digital?

Yes, WD.

Funny another line says otherwise...:

Which is it?

I mean that they are working fine if I connect only 1 of them at the time, not in a RAID. Well, if you call that 5-60 drops during the testing. I mean no freezing.

 

[EarthDog]

TLER issue is still my guess.

 

[Bag-o-doughnuts]

My guess would be a driver issue... Conflict of some sort... Check your task manager and see what could be the cause... Maybe it has nothing to do with what you are looking at...

 

[EarthDog]

I would look there first ^^...Install the latest chipset and raid drivers. If that doesnt work, try cables...if that doesnt work, its likely TLER as I linked to earlier.

 

[Deleted member 94297]

How should I boot up from DOS when I don't have a working floppy drive? (for WDTLER.EXE)

Also, just to make sure if I understood correctly - it does not influence the HDD degradation in any way, right? It's disabled by default on my drive, and it's from 2006 or 2005, I believe. all 3 of them.
And it requires it to be enabled for RAID, so I should set it on 7/0 when I'll enable it, right?

 

[CompuTamer]

Another question, what are you using for your downloads? I've had uTorrent completely screw up everything for some reason. The cache of uTorrent and of Windows seems to collide. A lot.

 

[Deleted member 94297]

Steam.
Oh, and when in the RAID, I did some testing (sorry, forgot to mention), and the speed was going down and up from 0 to 120mb/s every 2-5 seconds.
And keep in mind that without the RAID (and only one disk - now) the testing goes from 5-60mb/s every 2-5 seconds too when doing the same read/write test.

 

[EarthDog]

Did you reinstall/update chipset drivers?

 

[Deleted member 94297]

Did you reinstall/update chipset drivers?

Just realized that I was thinking about BIOS drivers when I was asked the first time... I'm distracted lately.
Anyway, I've just downloaded nForce drivers, installing them at the moment.
I never did install the, didn't had such problems before.
Do I have to install them every time I install Windows? I'm new to 'that' kind of drivers.

EDIT: The speed is still jumping after installing it and restarting my PC... So I guess it didn't help.

 

[EarthDog]

You install chipset drivers ALWAYS, yes.

What is the remainder of the system look like?

 

[Deleted member 94297]

M57SLI-S4 motherboard, 2x2gb DDR2 memory, Athlon 5400+ CPU, old 420W PSU which came with my case... I think that's all.

As for chipset drivers - I really never installed them... What exactly do they change? I don't see any change in the testing after installing them.

 

[Bag-o-doughnuts]

M57SLI-S4 motherboard, 2x2gb DDR2 memory, Athlon 5400+ CPU, old 420W PSU which came with my case... I think that's all.

As for chipset drivers - I really never installed them... What exactly do they change? I don't see any change in the testing after installing them.

When installing windows for the first time, it uses a legacy driver that works with pretty much anything.. but at lower performance... If you go into your device manager, you can see what devices need drivers installed. However, your chip set may or may not have an explanation point next to the device in question. as a rule of thumb you always install device drivers for every piece of hardware installed.