I am first of all wondering if anyone has ever experienced a motherboard that was faulty in such a way as to occasionally and repeatedly cause boot issues with very few other symptoms.
My PC worked fine for several months. And then one day wouldn't boot. It seemed to have a corrupt Master File Table. I got a new HDD (and a DVD drive), installed Windows 8 by DVD, and used DMDE (I would really recommend it!) to recover my documents from the 'faulty' HDD. I found out that the HDD wasn't faulty after all through a combination of SanDisk's tools and the fact that my totally new HDD, connected to a different SATA port with a new cable, soon failed as well. I checked the RAM with Memtest86+ for a couple of passes and it was fine. The RAM is also seated firmly. My problem also doesn't appear related to power consumption or CPU/GPU activity.
Anyways, over the last month or so, I've repeatedly had my hard drives stop booting. This happens every few days really. I get various errors, because it seems there's various levels of corruption. I have NOT seen file corruption again like the first time. My files seem to stay intact each time now. But the drives just become unbootable until I clean them out. (Windows 8 disc can't repair or use a restore point in almost all cases) I keep having to bounce between hard drives. I either reformat and reinstall Windows or just clone the operational drive to the recently failed one (since I've become VERY tired of wiping EVERYTHING). I have tried many many things in relation to what hard drive(s) is/are connected or not, whether I clear one or both or neither, whether I use Windows' RAID 1 equivalent or no RAID, whatever. (in the case of trying the mirrored array, one still fails and then refuses to sync because Windows can't access it correctly, followed by the other failing with enough time)
I cannot for the life of me understand quite what is going on. I don't think it's the HDDs, RAM, CPU, GPU, or PSU. (I also checked voltages with voltmeter not that that counts for much) It seems it can only be the motherboard.
On Newegg, there is a nonzero number of people who say that this mobo suddenly failed on them after 6 months of use, although they don't elaborate on that failure as far as I've seen.
My questions:
Can a mobo cause boot corruption, indiscriminately across more than one port/HDD, without generally causing other issues? (Has this happened to you?)
Is there something else that I should suspect?
[I have other questions about buying a new mobo but that seems better placed in a new thread]
My hardware:
CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 RAM
Storage (original): Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Storage (new): WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM
Video Card: HIS Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 200R ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 64-bit (also 8.1 at times)
Thank you very much for all support or anecdote, and apologies if an answer already exists which I couldn't find.
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mobo corrupting boot sector