A7V600 and WD Raptor SATA---Blue Screen Errors---seen this before?

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Randy

I had a WD Raptor working perfectly with a Gigabyte MB (Via KT600). Changed
to Asus A7V600. Shortly after, started getting blue screen of death errors
"unable to mount boot drive". To boot, you have to use Windows recovery
console (XP) and do a chkdsk. It ALWAYS finds errors on the C: drive (and
usually on an older SCSI drive used for storage as well). After this, drive
will boot and run normally until you shut it off again.

WD sent me a new drive. I loaded XP from scratch. This one started doing
the exact same thing so chances are it's not the hard drive. Changed
memory. Same problem. This all starts to stink like a bad motherboard or
incompatible combination. Anybody got any similar tales to tell?
 
I had a WD Raptor working perfectly with a Gigabyte MB (Via KT600). Changed
to Asus A7V600. Shortly after, started getting blue screen of death errors
"unable to mount boot drive". To boot, you have to use Windows recovery
console (XP) and do a chkdsk. It ALWAYS finds errors on the C: drive (and
usually on an older SCSI drive used for storage as well). After this, drive
will boot and run normally until you shut it off again.

WD sent me a new drive. I loaded XP from scratch. This one started doing
the exact same thing so chances are it's not the hard drive. Changed
memory. Same problem. This all starts to stink like a bad motherboard or
incompatible combination. Anybody got any similar tales to tell?
Click to expand...

It could be any number of things. SATA sends data at 1500Mbits/sec
(8b10b coded) down the cable. This is a seriously high data rate, and
the cables have to be treated with respect. Do not pinch or bend them,
because that will cause an impedance discontinuity. If you have two
cables, and the second has never been used, give it a try.

Data is sent down SATA cables in packets. Each packet is protected by
a CRC check, and data gets repeated if there is an error. However, no
matter how strong the CRC check is, if the error condition is persistent,
errored data will leak through.

A good disk design, and a good software diagnostic package would
allow loopback testing, where the drive loops the data from the
motherboard, so the cables and chip drivers/receivers can be checked.
Do Raptor's come with any kind of test software that you can run ?
I just checked the standards, and there are three flavors of loopback
for testing, of which one is mandatory for SATA.

HTH,
Paul
 
Thanks, Paul,

WD has no updated test software for SATA drives. I tried a second (unused)
cable with no change. There are no bends. Backing off memory settings had
no effect. I'm just about to order another Gigabyte board.

The interesting thing is that my IBM SCSI harddrive (used for storage only)
which connects with an Adaptec SCSI card always gets corrupted (errors found
in chkdsk) when the computer turns off, JUST LIKE THE MAIN SATA HARD DRIVE.
Of course, it was there and working fine when the mainboard was a Gigabyte,
but things can fail at the most inopportune times. (seems to work fine tho)

The D drive (second partition on the WD Raptor) never gets errors.

Interesting that the system works fine until you turn it off. That's when
the errors happen. Correct the errors and the computer always starts up
perfectly.

Randy
 
Found something else: The problem only happens when you turn the computer
off and start it up. Rebooting seems to be no problem.

The blue screen reads: unmountable boot volume

Changed the BIOS back to what came on the board. No change.
 
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