Sata died on my motherboard

[lightshow]

So I've been experiencing some problems

1) Delay write failed and other hard drive related specific slowness (when unraring files, etc.)

It is evident when I either try to run Utorrent and one core of my core2 duo processor is using it's max on the utorrent service. Keep in mind that this is happening even if I'm just downloading a 250 MB file and just now started. It immediately jumps to 100% on one of the cores.

Also, when i kick off winrar to unrar a volume, one core pops up to 100% processor usage.

I thought it was my drive that was going bad WD Sata II drive so I got a new one. The new one is experiencing the same issues and won't even make it through Windows XP Installation without a pop up that says delay write failed and causes me to totally have to reformat and start again.


Since it happened to both drives (both a new) I thought the problem may be in the motherboard itself (it has onboard sata)

Gigabyte GA-965P-S3



My question is, can a damaged onboard motherboard sata port (any of them; i've rotated through the others to see if it would fix anything and it hasn't) provide *working* sata access but have it be degraded access (resulting in delay write failed and long seek/access time)


Or is it a all or nothing deal where the sata port is either 100% dead or it works?

[Artemis]

One of the first things I would do is check to see if there are BIOS updates for your motherboard and if the updated BIOS has been for any of these issues. Also your drive manufacturer releases drive diagnostic software to check hard drive performance. These diagnostic utilities include tests on the controller itself. I would run a hard drive diagnostic to see if there are any read write errors at a low level. The hard drive diagnostics and BIOS update will at least narrow down the possiblities.

[clocker]

Try these suggestions.

[lightshow]

So I've updated my BIOS and did some drive checks using Western Digital's software.

It seems that when I run a scan, I get a BSOD when it is "checking the cable".

So I tried swapping out the SATA cable and BAM! Everything is now working great!


So I believe it was the SATA cable!


Thanks clocker and Artemis.

I would have never had thought of checking the SATA cable until I saw clocker's link and did the WD drive test.

[Col. Skillz]

So I've updated my BIOS and did some drive checks using Western Digital's software.

It seems that when I run a scan, I get a BSOD when it is "checking the cable".

So I tried swapping out the SATA cable and BAM! Everything is now working great!


So I believe it was the SATA cable!


Thanks clocker and Artemis.

I would have never had thought of checking the SATA cable until I saw clocker's link and did the WD drive test.

ahh mate, always check the cables, it can save a LOT of frustration =p

[Artemis]

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