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Help diagnosing chronic hardrive failures....

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I built a $3000 system for a girlfriend and her husband about 6 months ago. I used 4, 80gb seagate drives in raid 0. After a couple months they started having major errors. I ran the seagate tests and found out that 2 of the drives were bad. I was kinda surprised how 2 of the 4 I purchased could be bad. Anyhooo, I sent them back to seagate with the error codes and they sent me 2 new drives, of course it took weeks.
The computer ran great for about 5 days and then wouldnt boot to windows. I tried everything. Finally I ran the seagate tests on all 4 drives and was dumbfounded to see that the other 2 drives also tested bad. I sent them back to seagate and they overnighted me 2 new drives. Now the computer is having errors again and Im certain its the friggin hardrives again. Can anyone enlighten me as to wtf is going on here with this machine??

System specs.
Asus deluxe sli
AMD 3700+ San diego 1mb
1gb Kingston Hyper x
2- 7600gtx 256mb in sli
4 seagate 80gb sata in raid 0
2- dual layer dvd (cant remember brand)
sb audigy 2
600 watt power supply sli cert

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I built a $3000 system for a girlfriend and her husband about 6 months ago. I used 4, 80gb seagate drives in raid 0. After a couple months they started having major errors. I ran the seagate tests and found out that 2 of the drives were bad. I was kinda surprised how 2 of the 4 I purchased could be bad. Anyhooo, I sent them back to seagate with the error codes and they sent me 2 new drives, of course it took weeks.
The computer ran great for about 5 days and then wouldnt boot to windows. I tried everything. Finally I ran the seagate tests on all 4 drives and was dumbfounded to see that the other 2 drives also tested bad. I sent them back to seagate and they overnighted me 2 new drives. Now the computer is having errors again and Im certain its the friggin hardrives again. Can anyone enlighten me as to wtf is going on here with this machine??

System specs.
Asus deluxe sli
AMD 3700+ San diego 1mb
1gb Kingston Hyper x
2- 7600gtx 256mb in sli
4 seagate 80gb sata in raid 0
2- dual layer dvd (cant remember brand)
sb audigy 2
600 watt power supply sli cert


Moral of the story....Stay away from RAID O. If one drive has so much as

a hickup, you'll lose your array. With 4 drives in the array, you have a

1/4 chance of something going wrong. Not worth the risk. Also, how are

the drives situated in your case. If you have the drives all in a tightly

knit area, the drives may be getting too hot. Make sure there is good

circulation around them. GL :) 

Don't forget, you have 4 drives, 2 GPU's, and a warm(not hot) processor in

your case, not to mention a 600W PSU. Those are alot of heat- producing

components, and depending on the size, and layout of your case, as well as

amount(and placement) of fans, heat could be the culprit...Something to

consider.

Well I built it in Raid 0 because that what they wanted, didnt have a choice there.
Heat is not an issue, the room is kept cold and the system temp never goes above 35C. Other suggestions.
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Quote:
Well I built it in Raid 0 because that what they wanted, didnt have a choice there.
Heat is not an issue, the room is kept cold and the system temp never goes above 35C. Other suggestions.


Dumb question?? Is that a Promise controller??
They have been known to be a little flaky...
My 2c....

No its NV raid from the Asus Deluxe that I mentioned above.
How would a flaky controller card cause 4 hardrives to fail anyways??
Now that would be flaky. lol.

Grimmy, thanks for the suggestion, but a faulty motherboard would not cause 4 hardrive failures, it's not possible.
A friend suggested that the computer may have been dropped. I went over to my girlfriends house and looked the computer over when no one was around. Sure enough the left rear corner of the case is completely bent out of shape, it surely has been dropped. That certaily would be the reason for the hardrive failurs. Im really pissed now that they didnt tell me that it was dropped. :evil: 

Errr.. Yikes.... Bent case?

Well... I thought I'd do some searching. After reading that other forum, seems allot of people having hard drive failures that are sea gate and asus motherboards, and mostly those who have 2 or more drives. Just realized the date on those post (2003-2005).

I'm on an asus board, but I only run one 80 gig sea gate (raid 0), and haven't had problems (knock on wood)... heh

Sorry to hear something went bump in the night that your friends didn't tell you about.
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