Applications freezing on 2TB drives

[sammmy123456]

Hi All,

I've recently installed a new OCZ 120GB SSD into my machine and also added two 2TB Western Digital hard drives into my machine at the same time.

Fresh Windows 7 x64 install on the SSD, with the 2TB drives (1 partitioned in half for data/applications, the other just for games) and all was working fine until I installed a few games on the Games drive.

While playing Fallout 3, randomly the game will just lock up causing you to kill the process. At first I thought it was the game (Bethesda games tend to be buggy...), so I opened it up and kept playing. It will always crash after that however. I've seen it crash after 30 seconds of gameplay up to an hour or so before it will crash again.

I uninstalled it and reinstalled to no avail. I then installed it on the other drive and the same thing occured. Have also replaced the SATA cables and changed the SATA ports as well.

My motherboard is an ASUS P8P67-PRO 1st edition, which was bought shortly after Sandy Bridge processors were released, and I had heard that SATA port degradation is present on those boards after around 3 years of use, which this mobo hasn't got anywhere near as of yet.

There is a tool provided by Intel or ASUS (can't remember who) which shows you which ports are unaffected by this issue. I ran this tool and it told me the two SATA 6GB ports and the two Marvell 3GB ports are ok, it's only the Intel ones which are affected. My SSD was already on one 6GB, with one of the 2TB on the second. I moved the 2nd 2TB onto one of the Marvell ports along with my Samsung BluRay drive. Still no luck unfortunately... Fallout ran ok for an hour before crashing and then kept doing the same thing.

My PC specs are as follows:

ASUS P8P67-PRO
Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium SP1
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD
2x 2TB Western Digital Green HDD's
16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR3 RAM
VTX3D Radeon HD6970 2GB
OCZ Fatal1ty 750W Modular PSU

Does anybody have any ideas at all?

Thanks,

Sam

 

[smorizio]

where you place the game on one large drive or the other will not matter. I would first check that you have the newest intel chipset loaded and see if there an updated marvell driver for that mb sata chipset. I would also check to see if your drives are in ide mod or ach mode. new hard drive and ssd should be in ach mode. has your getting lock up an hour into the game i would check the gpu temps and your cpu temps. I would also just to check the ram run some memtest on it.

 

[sammmy123456]

Hi Smorizio,

Thanks for your reply. I've loaded the new Intel chipset driver and the Marvell one is already the latest one available. Drives are also in ACHI mode in the BIOS as well. I'll open Fallout and check the temps shortly. I'll also run the memtest later and post the results.

Thanks for your help!

 

[sammmy123456]

Have just opened Fallout with MSI Afterburner on my other screen and Fallout crashed within 3 minutes of gameplay. GPU temps were a constant 52 degrees.

EDIT: Just ran Core Temp while running Fallout as well, again, crashed about 7 minutes into the game with all cores running at 44-46 degrees.

 

[smorizio]

also check the aa setting in the ccc and game ..most people on the web say that the ati cards will crash if force above 4aa on the game.

 

[sammmy123456]

Thanks for the tips, but still a no go.

I set AA in Fallout to 4x, still crashed. I then set it to off to test and the same thing happened.

I also forced CCC to Override application settings and set the AA to 4x as well as off and it and still happens...