Is my SATA drive corrupted?

Computer Forum Storage Devices
1

Guys (and gals) I think I am in deep trouble.
A few days ago I left my PC working overnight (running Windows…:x: ), folding. In the morning, instead of discovering another completed WU, i found the good ol’ BSOD. I cannot remember the exact stop error but I though it might be connected to the F@H program I had running. I then restarted the PC and it seemed like all was well. However, I started getting more and more BSOD and eventually I noticed that under information, it noted viamraid.dll which I am assuming is something to do with the SATA driver or another RAID utility.

After reading a snippet on line I decided, very, very foolishly to remove my RAID configuration tool. After that when I tried to start Windows I just got a BSOD. So, no more windows. Just to confirm that I did not remove the SATA driver, just the RAID configuration tool.

So, I thought, I do not mind re-installing as my system is really messy…:open_mouth:
But even after installing to the original partition, including formating, I still get the BSOD. So I tried low level CHKDSK. When I try to go through Windows, I get the BSOD. When I try the ‘Windows-start-time-Check’ it just freezes at 41% of phase 4. So at the moment I can do very little with my precious 120GB SATA drive.

I since installed Windows on my spare IDE drive. There are no problems there. I have got the SATA drive visible and I can open the partitions to look at but as soon as I try to check the partitions I get… you guessed it… BSOD!

By the way, I never had any problem mounting and/or reading/writing from Linux… :eek:

So, my question is (I know it took a while to get there), as I cannot check the disk properly with windows, how to I find out whether I am having a problem with the disk or with the SATA controller? is there a command line program I can run from a floppy which will tell me if there is something wrong with my drive?

Thanks for reading through all this…

2

same problem here!

but i seem to have fixed it by using teh RAIDII controller, (it’s backward compatible with SATA) and its gone now.

lol, i used to reinstall windows at least 5 times a day!

3

Is this a peice of hardware you are talking about or different driver?

Thanks for this!

Ahhhh, hold on… I have two SATA sockets on my board. Could this be as simple as connecting the drive to the second socket?

4

I would say there is nothing wrong in trying this as well… Jst change the socket and if ur windows doesnt boot after that then u might need to set priority through BIOS…
Also, try to format that drive through windows… If that doesnt work then use windows disk…

5

[COLOR=“Blue”]UPDATE:

Well, I have pretty much ascertained that the problem is with the controller.
I forgot I had a PartitionMagic rescue disk which does weird and wonderful things from a floppy. There are no errors on the drive so the next thing, I suppose is to find a PCI card which will have internal sockets to take my SATA cable… I am sure it will be cheaper than a new mobo… :frowning:

Thanks guys for looking and commenting… :cool:

6

yes, it’s a different controller.
i’ve got 4 sata sockets, and 4 sataIIs and none of the sata work, and wen i placed it in a sataII one everything was fine.
its definitely not your hard drive

7

Thanks guys…
I cannot find a new card for less than £20! Grrrrrrrrr
I saw a few on eBay but I so not have money to throw at some :swear: twaty eBayer… :doh: :stars: