Seagate HDD acting up.

darkstar782

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Dec 24, 2005
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Hi people :)

I have a Seagate 7200.8 400GB PATA HDD, which is one of the drives in a software JBOD array.

It shares its IDE cable with another drive, a 250GB Maxtor. The Maxtor is fine, and performs perfectly.

The Seagate however is showing HDtach results like This, and Disk Management is showing the array as 'at risk' and the 400GB drive as 'errors' at times.

Scandisk finds nothing. No data has been lost (yet).

When running games from the disk, the computer will occasionally freeze for a second or two during movies, or the sound will corrupt, with the HDD light going solid yellow for a few secs. This doesnt seem to happen with .avi files, but I have no way of knowing if these are stored on another drive in the Array, as it is JBOD.

The other drives give nice stable smooth HDtach results, even the one that shares an IDE cable with the Seagate, and also give much nicer burst speeds.

Motherboard is an Asus P5W DH, and the drive with the issues is on the ICH7R IDE channel. Latest Intel chipset drivers are installed, BIOS is version 1407. All essential and optional Windows updates are applied. This occours even with all other processes shut down, the HDtach results are still replicateable and games still stutter with just 17 other processes running. (16 others after I shut down task manager)

Computer is virus free, spyware free, and every single other thing about the system is 100% rock solid. All the other hard disks are fine.

Any ideas?
 
Run a Smart test and the manufacturer's diagnostics on this disks.
You can get the Smart test at:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

The manufacturers diagnostics are in Seagate's website.
If it fails the Smart test replace the drive, because it can go bad at any time.
Do a backup of the questionable drive.