I would like some opinions on this problem before I tell the guy the drive is bad. Is it possible that Seagate's drive diagnostic utility may report a bad HDD because of data/controller corruption? I know a lot of those SATA controllers are having problems right now....

Problem: System will not boot into Windows XP anymore. Worked for a month fine, but finally crapped out. On bootup, it displays the XP logo and blue screens when it loads ntfs.sys.


Symptoms & Info:

Attempting to install 2000/XP on this system fails. (Pre-installation blue-screens at ntfs.sys), depsite having the latest and oldest drivers available. BIOS of controller and board have been flashed to latest.

Controller works properly in device manager when XP is installed on IDE.

Computer does the same thing with a different controller (same chipset) and same SATA HDD.

A different system with an alternative controller (same chip) does the same thing with the drive plugged in.

Both systems work when the drive is NOT plugged in.

Drive works in Windows 98, but since it cannot mount NTFS volumes.... Who knows.

Seagate Seatools claims the drive is defective (fails SMART tests).

I wouldn't think so: the data corruption happens between the memory and the disk controller. Once the drive gets the data, corrupted or not, the drive circuitry handles the actual writing in the data sectors on the disk.

The IDE and SATA controllers are different.

SMART test sounds like a good final word on the drive being faulty. You might try a win98 boot disk with fdisk to delete and recreate the partitions and then format. Are there any formatting tools in the Seagate Tools? I've gotten a HD to work again by running the IBM DFT low level format tool over and over several times on an IBM drive.

If the drive fails the S.M.A.R.T. test then it's definitely faulty and needs to be replaced. The S.M.A.R.T. test is run directly on the disk by the built-in diagnostics. I've had several drives fail the test just prior to complete failure. Looks like S.M.A.R.T. is doing its job predicting impending disaster. This problem cannot be fixed as it is physical. Windows XP verifies all files during install and will report file corruption, unlike win98 (unless corruption is serious), so damaged files will cause problems and stop the OS from loading (unlike win98).

Sounds like I made a good decision then.

The guy was probably victim of data corruption since NTFS wouldn't load. Even the though I thought it was JUST software, I checked the SMART tests... They failed which I believe is a good indicator it is bad physically.

Since the drive was under warranty, I told the fellow to RMA the drive or format it using an external SATA controller (He really doesn't want to do that though because he has lots of stuff!).

There was no way I could access the data though.
I tried with Windows 98 / NTFS driver, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.. All crash or freeze when trying to load the volume.

Crashing/freezing during drive access indicates data corruption/communication errors with the drive, so you did the right thing. It's strange that Windows doesn't have better fault tolerance when dealing with this type of problem. Good work Rick.

I had the exact same problem. Seagate 80GB SATA, SI112 on an ASUS 87N8X. I am not absolutely positive, but I think that this happened to two separate drives on the same motherboard. I replaced the motherboard, and I hope that takes care of the problem. I have the latest A7N8X bios (1005) and SI112A drivers (1.0.0.22).

Bad SMART status does not always indicate a bad drive. Occasionally conflicting hardware, dirty contacts, loose cables, temporary overheating, or other issues will cause SMART to fail abnormally. I have experienced this mostly when mixing older hard disks with newer hard disks, one or the other may return bad SMART status and reccomend replacement, but then upon reconfiguring it will work fine again.

With NTFS BSODs on boot, including during recovery console login attempts, it is not always a bad disk. Just yesterday this was occuring to me, it turned out to be a corrupted partition table. My only option was to fdisk/format/reinstall, but afterwhich the disk is functioning perfectly. I suggest if you experience this again, before trashing the disk you stress test it.

However, failed SMART tests while booted into an OS usually indicate pending failure... SMART works by masking errors using reserved/extra sectors, which although may be good for an occasional mis-hit, can sometimes make things worse... if you receive bad SMART (make sure to do an extended self test if the drive supports it) while booted, uh oh, good idea to return it.

SMART status is monitored and reported directly from the hard drive electronics.

External components such as cables, or external hardware, cannot cause SMART failures, although these may cause SMART monitoring software to get bad response from querying the hard drive SMART status.

The SMART circuit should report a specific failure response giving the exact nature of the failure (using a specific failure code).

If you are getting a genuine SMART failure, then it can be due to only one of two things:

1. Your hard drive is about to fail.
2. Your hard drive SMART circuit is defective.

If you get a SMART failure reported, then it would be wise to verify by running the SMART test using the utilities made available on many hard drive manufacturer's websites. These usually involve booting to a floppy to run the tests.

If any of these tests fail, then you have a bad disk that will fail anytime soon, and you should back up any data as soon as possible if you have not already done so.

Drive defect management (bad sector management) happens transparently in the background and has no effect on SMART status reporting. Microsoft Windows (any flavour) does not monitor hard drive SMART status and cannot report SMART failures without the aid of other utilities.

The problem was definitely not the hard drive. The latest BIOS from ASUS apparently fixes a data corruption problem caused by the BIOS' interaction with the SATA chip from Silicon Image. The issue is not limited to ASUS boards, so apparently more than one manufacturer made the same mistake as ASUS that led to the problem. This leads me to believe that Silicon Image shares some of the blame. If you are planning on keeping the SiI / SATA drive setup, make sure you update your BIOS and format the corrupted drive.

I'm pretty sure the SATA data corruption issue wouldn't cause SMART errors as they're an internal diagnostic of the drive circuitry and mechanics. Nic explained it best. I must have reinstalled Windows 20 times working out the BIOS and driver problems with that controller and could always reformat and run the drives fine until I loaded the nVidia drivers, which turned on UDMA and caused problems.

Hi all!
Sorry for weak english. So I have the same problem. The newest drivers and bios has been installed on my system (including XP SP1a), but the system is crashes with all driver. Windows default, or new driver, whatever. Board: Abit NF7-S 2.0 (SI3112a). HDD: Seagate ??

That was exactly my point.

I've proved this method useful for me in some cases:

Get a drive format utility like Maxtor's MAXBLAST and reformat and convert to FAT32, then try to instal XP/2k.

Hi!

I Have a simular proplem.

i Have got a ABIT NF7-S V2.0 And a Seagate 120GB SATA 8MB Cache.

If i install WinXP it pens between freezing and isnt found by SATA bios, but if i install 3112A Drivers i cant load windows at all!

I mailed both seagate & ABIT but havent got any answeres yet (3 Days and still going...)

Anyone have this problem? (or just a good solution)

//Aztech

I have exactly the same problem. I tried 2 harddrives (Raptors), and the problem still exics. It must be the SATA-controller. I think that Silicon Image must make some efforts to make a good BIOS and drivers.

Now I'm running with the 10032 SI drivers and the 1007 Asus Bios, so the newest drivers. But got still the problem.

This is for Maurice666, nothing to do with this thread,[I shall probably be remonstrated with now] I didn't know that there was another Maurice "on board"......greetings!, you'll love this site, they have helped me many times, with viruses, & loads of other things since joining!
Get those posts in, 50, & you become a member, & then you become entitled to have an Avatar, as you can see, mine is a skull with red eyes, also, you'll be able to add a "signature", mine is a quote by Descartes, thinking of it, you probably had to add "666" as there was already a Maurice,....me![It would be nice to know your location, you can amend it, & add it], as you see, I live in England,.....have a look at my profile [if you want]
Once again, welcome.

Maurice

The problem is with the Asus board rather its the controller. I use to use that board and I had to find me a cheap sata controller on eaby.

i have the same problem. is there any way i will be able to get the data back if i format the drive?
i have a seagate barracuda 120 gb sata drive with a corrupt ntfs.sys.
will it work if i buy a new hdd, install windows xp on it, format the old drive and use a program like GetDataBack or something?
thankful for all help.

I have a mate who does Data recovery and this is the first time we've seen this issue. We always image the original problem drive onto another HD so when working on that drive if we ****-up we still have the original drive/data.

So we imaged the drive and put it in the comp as a secondary slave, during boot up after the XP screen it goes Blue with the NTFS.SYS problem.

SO we thought we'd try it in an extranal case. As soon as windows tried to read the drive blue screen.

So it's not a hardware issue, does anyone know how we can get the drive up so we can run our recovery s/w. Will windows 98 no care about this issue?

Any suggestions are greatful.

Cheers
Gareth :bounce:

hi,

i too experienced heavy data loss and corruption with my sii 3112 and windows xp. now i found an article on si's site: data corruption

basically, if you have a via based board and use more than one sata hd connected to the 3112, you're doomed (unless your mobo still gets new bios updates including the fix).

unfortunately, my motherboard won't get a new bios... so it's away with the sii 3112 (and away with a lot of data. always backup (from now on ;-))