Harddrive / Controller - MoBo problem ??

[net_Gh0st]

A couple days ago while watching a Movie on my Western Digital 400gig Caviar drive the movie began to skip like a record and I heard a clicking sound from my case which I assumed was a sign of failure from my previous reads...

So prior to that by a day or so out of the blue - A seperate drive I have which is NEVER USED (74 gig WD Raptor) but is hooked up to the same Promise Raid controller on my ASUS SK8V Mobo , all of sudden is not appearing on my computer ...

I go into "my computer" on my PC and guess what - NO drive Icon ... So I do a restart and it comes back ... first time this has ever happened.

So a day after hearing the clicking and 2 days or so after the other drive had disappeared I backed everything up on both drives ...

So the other day - I rip a copy of Chapelle's Block party soundtrack to that same drive that had skipped and clicked that time - The 400 gig Caviar - and that entire day I was watching movies off of it one after another for hours ... So after that I rip blockparty to my drive and pull it up in Winamp to start playing it from my harddrive... for about 30 min. Then I take off. I come back home 4 or so hours later and now THAT Caviar drive was missing ...

So I restart , it comes back , I attempt to play block party and it plays no problem.

So initially since this happened to 2 seperate drives i'm wondering if this has to do with the raid controller they're hooked into because the OTHER 2 drives are hooked up to a seperate raid controller and haven't had this issue ... Or maybe its just a coincidence and they're both shitting the bed at the same time.

Or i'm thinking it may be the raid controller itself and or the motherboard ...

I left my computer on over the past 4 or 5 days (as I always do) and went to hop on it this morning and apparently over night the raid controller with those 2 drives on it shit the bed - so I click the OK box and suddenly every window, Icon and even the tool bar on the screen was stripped away leaving ONLY the desktop wallpaper ... I hit the windows button to try and bring up the start menu = nothing. I hit control alt delete = nothing.

So I did a restart by holding the power button - first raid controller - all set

Second raid controller says "detecting = no devices - the bios is not installed" ... Which is a mind fuck because I was using those drives a couple days ago and haven't reformatted my computer since so unless someone magically hacked into my computer and fucked with it OR it just burned out it should not be saying that ...

So windows now loads up - tells me "new hardware detected , promise raid controllers" ... asks me to install the "software" so I put in the drivers disk as this is all I've ever needed when I reformatted my computer and I get a message saying "the software is not located on this disK" ... I dont know what the think about that one either ... And continuously over the past couple days , while I've had my computer on and haven't restarted for days , the drives seem to come and go on their own randomly ... I'm really lost on this ...

Any suggestions for diagnostic tools for checking out my motherboard and or controller to find out if something is burning out ...

 

[net_Gh0st]

Hmm ... can't think of anyone else with raid controllers on their pc , that i know ...

I'll keep you posted ...

I'm thinking it must be the controllers cause the System drive is now skipping and locking up a bit as well ... the screen will freeze , i'll hear the drive sound like its searching , then everything will unfreeze 10 or less seconds later ... This coupled with the fact that I had two other drives doing pretty much the same type things when I was playing media from them is telling me that the chances of 3 drives going on the fritz at the same time is just ridiculous , not impossible obviously but far from common i'd say so i'm guessing the controllers/mobo ... maybe the PSU , dunno ... What do you think could cause this ?

Thank you for your suggestion too

 

[net_Gh0st]

I dont have them in array ... is raid zero stripping ?? can't remember exactly ...

The setup on the VIA raid controllers I have a 74gig Raptor (system) and then a 150 raptor (for Digital VSTi's) both free from any Raid 0 or 1 ...

On the promise - the main controller i'm having issues with - I have a 400gig Caviar ( misc. media ) and a 74gig Raptor ( for random samples,edits of music) , obviously not in array as well ...

I may be using array wrong in this message but I have it setup so basically neither drive effects the others performance what so ever ...

They're both on an ASUS SK8V mobo ...

I left another post just before you did as well above ...

Thanks !

 

[net_Gh0st]

Hmmm ... I can tell you this for sure ... the 2 controllers I have ( each able to control two SATA 150 type HD's) are both onboard the MoBo ...

Also , the other day when they were having a fit I did a restart and out of the blue the promise raid controller - the one the first two possiby dieing drives is on - scanned for devices and came back with "not devices detected - the bios is not installed" which is absolute BS because they were working an hour prior to that ... I've since restarted again and the drives are back ... I'm thinking they may heat up and crap the bed ?? Although I do have 3 PC fans in my case ...

 

[net_Gh0st]

So Far so good !!! ... Although the system drive is still stalling and then giving off that "scanning" sound and then my comp unfreezes so i'm going to do the bios now and see if that leaves me ... The other drives , so far, appear to be stable ...

EDIT: So far no longer so good ... Starting watching a movie off the 400 gig drive ... it skipped once or twice and eventually just crapped out ... I checked the "my computer" folder and BOTH of the drives on that same promise controller were gone when i hadn't even used the Raptor on it ...

Going to try and install the BIOS however its a .rom file and i dont have a program to run it ... any suggestions ?

Thanks a million for your help so far , ill keep you posted on what happens ...