Recent build - Hard Drive Issues (long)

[mir23]

I recently built a system and have been having problems since the first week. Initially it started out as 1-4 BSODs a day. I ran the SMART test on the Samsung (Seagate) drive and it failed. I promptly got a WD drive as a replacement until the old one could be RMA'd. Everything ran fine for a few days and then the random BSODs crept back up. At that point, I ran memtest86+ to check the memory and it showed about 400ish errors on the second stick. I removed it and ran memtest on the remaining stick and everything was fine for 2 weeks. No BSODs - nothing. Yesterday, on a reboot, my mobo BIOS reported that the new HD failed SMART. Confirmed it with the Western Digital diagnostics. Specifically, its a sector allocation error. I ran chkdsk before I left this morning and will check it when I go home for lunch. At this point I am extremely frustrated. I've never had a problems with a build before and I am not sure where to look next. Motherboard problem? PSU issue? Do I need to RMA the drives/memory or can they be salvaged when I find the true culprit?

Here are the components:

ASUS P8Z77-V LX LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Core i5-2500K

COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBXL

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

EVGA 012-P3-2078-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti - 448 Cores (Fermi) Classified Ultra 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP

Antec TruePower New TP-550 550W Continuous Power ATX12V V2.3 / EPS12V V2.91 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE

SAMSUNG 22X DVD Burner SATA Model SH-222BB/BEBE

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit

added..

Western Digital 1 TB WD Blue SATA III 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache

Please help!

 

[tomatthe]

I would return the Mem, and the HD until you have both showing no errors from smart status or memtest. When you have hardware that passes all test and still have bsod then start double checking that all drivers are the latest, and try to look for any type of pattern on when the bsod occurs.

IMO it's not worth troubleshooting any further until you have known good hardware. It may be worth replacing the sata cable on your drive if you were using the same one between both drives.