The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Here's a good question. Could disconnecting a Sata drive (Hot swappable), that windows is using for logfile stuff, cause the issue I'm seeing? Because it won't let me disconnect one of my drives right now. And it got me to thinking. I said screw it a few times a while back. With another drive that was connected. Keep in mind, I never yank a drive that isn't Hot swappable(AHCI).

 

Russ, Sam,

My MA-78G-DS3HP was an SB700 and was A-OK and still works with an OCd quad and some VRM cooling I added before selling. Actually ran quite cool just by adding heatsinks. The extra fan was icing on the cake

 

Re-installing Windows does not clean up your other hard drives it only cleans up the OS drive.

I can't tell you exactly what happed to cause the journal file to get corrupted, but once it gets corrupted you can't just delete the journal and rebuild it like you could in XP.

My drive had MP3's on it and I was adding tags and renaming some of them when it got corrupted. I had done this on several other music folders and never had a problem but this time that wasn’t the case. The links in the journal got fouled up somehow in the NTFS structure.

If you using AHCI it should be fine to hot swap, should be, but again that doesn't mean something won't go wrong. Possibly that is your issue but like I said prior it sure looks like your USN is the problem from the LED coming of full for some time during/after step 3 when the journal is checked. That is exactly what happed to me when I had that problem and the one folder of MP3's I lost temporarily since I had a backup.

Unless I have a RAID setup with hotswap I always safe-remove my drives as I’ve had too many issues just yanking drives and it isn’t worth the little bit of effort it takes to safely remove your drive. Even at that sometime I have to shutdown the system to release the drive which is what I do when it won’t detach safely.

If Windows is using a drive for profiles or caching then you can't hotswap it without forcing it to detach or shuting down.

 

Ok, so what you're suggesting, is since I reinstalled windows 7, and the bug remains, it has to be another drive causing the issue. Basically the re-installation gives me closure about the possibility of C:\ being the problematic...USN. So I have to dump every other drive one by one, until the problem is gone. Well, at least I don't have dozens of drives LOL!
And since the bug has been around a fair while, I'll assume that my 3Tb drive is fine. I'll start with my 1Tb black. It sees a LOT of use

 

I would assume that is true, that the newer drives after the problem was noticed should be OK. When you do your chkdsk(s) you can just do the short check which is 3 steps instead of 5 and if you watch the chkdsk routine you should see what drive it is failing on by doing them 1 at a time and checking for step 3 hanging or any corruption in the earlier steps. This can come about on an old drive that is mostly working but starting to fail, one of my 250G old drives started to have these issues too. So if it was failing on your OS drive that you just reformatted and installed fresh then you might want to check that drive with the manufactures diag program.

 

Once again, I'm gonna disconnect all storage drives, and see for several hours if that has an effect. Perhaps I'll allow the 3Tb to stay connected. If the bug does not present itself, there is still the possibility of a southbridge problem though. It does handle all the I/O signals after all. TMT5 media player does seem to have problems playing smoothly with this bug. Much like I've noticed with Netflix streaming. So if I can make it through several videos with TMT5 with nearly all the drives disconnected, I can assume that it's either a problematic drive(or USN within), or the southbridge. If the bug does not present itself in the allotted time, I'll reconnect what I call X:\, and go from there. My "X" drive could be the culprit. It's the oldest, and it's also the busiest...

LOL! X marks the spot. Wouldn't that be funny :S

 

Sounds like a good plan, you are right that it can still be several things you just need to eliminate as many possibilities as you can.

 

Estuansis,

Here's your MA78G-DS3HP



Here's my MA790X-UD4P



As you can see the 790X has a heatpipe cooler for the VRMs and the Northbridge. I removed it and cleaned all the goop that was originally on it for Thermal Paste, and used Ceramique to replace the Thermal Tape garbage that came on it. That dropped the MB temps from 53C to 39-40C after I removed the pretty blue covers from the heatsinks.

I originally bought your motherboard, but it failed after 2 weeks or so. I sent it in for replacement only to be sent an email from Newegg that the the board had been discontinued, and received a credit for it. I ordered the 790X-UD4P to replace it. Both excellent motherboards, but the 790X has twice the VRM power regulation (8+2 stages) than the 78G-DS3HP (4+1 stages), and better overclocking options. The two additional purple Sata ports are set as Hot Swapable, for the eSata bracket that comes with it. The biggest difference between the two boards is the SB750 on the 790X has ACC, while the 78G's SB700 does not, so you can't unlock locked cores with it. As I said, both are excellent motherboards with more than enough overclocking options!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Well, 'X' didn't mark the spot(Disconnected, the bug remained). I reconnected it, and disconnected 'U' drive, one of my 2Tb green drives. I sure hope it's not the culprit, but 20+ min without lockup :S My 'U' drive is one of my main main drives. It is conceivable something happened there. It houses my main backups. Adobe photoshop documents, videos, audio, etc. If it died, I would die LOL! I guess we'll see what happens. I'll watch a few vids, and go from there. If it makes it a few hours, I guess reformat will be in order. Which sucks. It would require my transferring 1.5Tb of data I do have ample space on my 3Tb drive though

Russ, am I to understand, you kept the heat pipe off?!?! LOL! Or you simply replaced the garbage TIM, with ceramique?

 

If you have to back it up use True Image or HDCopy as they will compress the 1.5T to a smaller size and should do a more thorough backup. You can save the image(s) to you 3T drive.

 

Fact of the matter is, I've been needing to organize several of my files anyway. Hundreds of Gigs need to be transferred to other drives anyway. It's looking more and more like that drive has the problem. Or at least a bug I just hope there aren't corrupt files on there :S I'm giving it a few more hours before I decide.

Thanks for your help Steve. Much appreciated

 

Wouldn't imaging the drive, image the problematic Journal as well? Or whatever the bug is. Heck, just transferring files over, I may be salvaging the bug. What if a file on the drive is causing windows to wig out for whatever reason.

 

No it just copies the data it isn't a sector copy (exact image) unless you designate it that way, default is not for most image tools.

I too am in the process of cleaning up all of the crap I have and better organizing it. I'm pretty organized normally as is but as the crap stacks up I've needed to change my structure too. And of course I'm fixing naming and tags for my 500G of music as well. Some of it is a real mess.

With HDCopy they now have an image mount tool so you could backup your drive(s) and check the backup(s) by mounting them before you wipe the drive(s). Also you may want to divide images into 4.3G parts (DVD size) as large files can be problematic.

As to the file wigging out; if it is due to a bad drive or not then when you copy it to a new location chkdsk or other tool will fix the problem or you will just loose the file, more likely. Windows copy tool will hang most probably if it runs across a corrupt or link problem of a file where as an imaging tool will log the error and move on, typically unless the problem is major.

 

I did suggest a bad drive when you first bought this problem up last month... Noob

 

I found it unlikely. I was mistaken. I don't just assume. I do base problems on logic. However, as you say, I am a Noob. I take no offense. It is true. I have much to learn. Since I don't understand enough yet, it makes troubleshooting a bit more complex. By the way, this isn't certain yet. It's simply looking like there is a problem with one of them. At this point, it is a near certainty though :S

 

You are far from a NOOB Kevin, none of us have all of the answers, sometimes even when we think we do... LOL

 

On a I/O error TrueImage will ask, "Retry, Ignore, or Cancel". Unfortunately, IIRC it doesn't list the file name.

 

Yah, I've come along way. But I never consider myself an expert. I'm always surprised by something new. Like this bug. Never encountered it before. I guess the odds increased with every drive I've purchased. People around me think I'm some kind of genius. Perhaps in comparison to each of them. If somebody asks me to look at something for them, It's usually a google search that helps me out. You just have to ask the right question, and interpret it correctly
Wish I'd have stuck with computers since the late eighties. We had a commodore 64 back then. I was exceptionally good at remembering commands. I can only imagine how far I'd be now. I have a feeling Linux would help me in my future endeavors. My living situation makes things difficult at the moment though

 

Oman7,

I just replaced the tape with Ceramique.

Russ

 

Interesting read!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_grease
According to wiki, you could do better than ceramique. Though more expensive Like my diamond compound. Though I still wonder just how much better it is. I'm probably gonna end up using the rest on my next board. And I'm gonna be highly careful about applying now. I think I've been adding too much :S