Very Strange Hard Drive problem 1

[Profmusic]

I have a Western Digital 160G ATA 100 hard drive (about 2 years old - retail). A few weeks ago, I began to have games freeze that were installed to this drive (it is my second hard drive). (Games like Madden 2007, NBA Live 2007, etc. - all of them freeze - the whole computer freezes and I have to reboot). After much trial and error I finally realized it was the hard drive. The games, when installed on my primary drive work fine. I have runn all the WD diagnostics and done windows error checking and chesking for bad sectors and it always is fine. Everything else works fineon the drive, including copying and writing etc. Does anyone have a clue what might be wrong. (I also changed the power and the cable, and swithched it to the master - no help). I have an ASUS A7N8X with an AMD 3200 (On board sound), an ATI All-in-wonder X800XT, and the master drive is a WD 100G ATA 100.

 

[maultier]

So, I would assume that the controller is waiting for the WD to indicate that it finished the last command it was issued. So, either the drive didn't interpret the command properly or the drive didn't send the acknowledgement that the last command was executed. It seems to be pointing to a logic or program issue. If it's logic, I suppose it's possible that the ps voltage is too low. If you have a meter, you could check the 5 volt levels. If no meter, try popping in another supply. Take a good close look at the capacitors on the motherboard. Those have been known to cause strange issues when they start breaking down. Any that look bloated or leaky are suspect.
If you have the ability to move the drive to another system and run the scenario that hangs it, that would eliminate the drive as the possibility. Diags are good for checking basic functionality but will sometimes miss a system level issue. Good luck.

 

[Profmusic]

Thanks for the help! I think you solved my problem. When you mentioned the 5 volt issue, I remember my cheap power supply only has 25 amps on the 5 volt rail and 17 on the 3.3 rail. When I got my Radeaon All-inWonder I bought a 500 watt power supply (cheap) not realizing at that time how important the amps to each rail were. I looked and realized I had my video card and my D drive on the same power line (the cheap power supply only has 2 seperate lines with several plugs on each). I plugged the video card into the line with the DVD and CD and now the game works. This explains why the D drive would only crash when playing an intense 3d game as the video card ramps up, it was taking power from the hard drive. It is definitely time to invest in a much better power supply. Thanks again!