Seagate SerialATA 160GB drive stops working

[Krzysztof Barski]

Hello,

I've ASUS A7N8X deluse mobo with Silicon Image sata controller.
I have bought a Seagate 160GB serial ata drive recently. I started
installing my windows xp home immediately on it, but i've ben greeted with
"Can't format partition" or similar error at 8% of the formatting process. I
did reset my computer and then serial ata utility said there are no sata
drives in my computer. I went to check the cables, but all of them are
properly plugged into appropriate slots and aren't loose. The whole thing
happened to me several more times, in random situations, sometimes i
couldn't even detect a drive for like 10 minutes, then i managed to install
XP but after restart my drive disappeared again. I switched the SATA cord to
another (had two of them with my mobo) then switched to secondary
controller - nothing helps. Cleaned connectors too. At the end i bought a
new power supply, because the old one showed 4.757 volts instead of 5volts
and 12,2 instead of 12 on Asus Probe 2.20.x Still no change, even voltages
appear the same despite the fact that the power supply is from another
manufacturer.
Final result, after a whole day of struggling is that i installed winXP, and
after few minutes of work, sometimes after 2 sometimes after 20, disk emits
triple loud sounds (like it does when performing a seeking operation) and
computer freezes. Windows system log says: "During Page swap operation a
device error was detected, \Device\Harddisk1\D" and sometimes drive resumes
it's work, sometimes i have to hard-reset computer. I think i can't do
anything more, please help or i will be forced to return the drive, although
i'm not sure what part of my hardware can be responsible for this issue.

Regards
Chris

[Pete Baker]

Hi Kryzystof

Have you the latest BIOS update from the Asus website? Make sure you have
the correct update, Asus released different updates depending on which PCB
revision your mainboard uses.

In Device Manager is the SATA controller (in 'SCSI and RAID controllers')
showing any problems, exclamation points etc.?

Are you able to run the SeaTools disk checking utility?

Hope some of that helps
Pete
------------------
"Krzysztof Barski" > wrote in message
...
> Hello,
>
> I've ASUS A7N8X deluse mobo with Silicon Image sata controller.
> I have bought a Seagate 160GB serial ata drive recently. I started
> installing my windows xp home immediately on it, but i've ben greeted with
> "Can't format partition" or similar error at 8% of the formatting process.
I
> did reset my computer and then serial ata utility said there are no sata
> drives in my computer. I went to check the cables, but all of them are
> properly plugged into appropriate slots and aren't loose. The whole thing
> happened to me several more times, in random situations, sometimes i
> couldn't even detect a drive for like 10 minutes, then i managed to
install
> XP but after restart my drive disappeared again. I switched the SATA cord
to
> another (had two of them with my mobo) then switched to secondary
> controller - nothing helps. Cleaned connectors too. At the end i bought a
> new power supply, because the old one showed 4.757 volts instead of 5volts
> and 12,2 instead of 12 on Asus Probe 2.20.x Still no change, even voltages
> appear the same despite the fact that the power supply is from another
> manufacturer.
> Final result, after a whole day of struggling is that i installed winXP,
and
> after few minutes of work, sometimes after 2 sometimes after 20, disk
emits
> triple loud sounds (like it does when performing a seeking operation) and
> computer freezes. Windows system log says: "During Page swap operation a
> device error was detected, \Device\Harddisk1\D" and sometimes drive
resumes
> it's work, sometimes i have to hard-reset computer. I think i can't do
> anything more, please help or i will be forced to return the drive,
although
> i'm not sure what part of my hardware can be responsible for this issue.
>
> Regards
> Chris
>
>