Corrupting Files on 'Healthy' Hard Drive and RAM - What Could it Be?

FieldMedic

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I have 2 PCs which have been built with very similar hardware both running XP.

Specs:

* AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 3.1GHz Socket AM2 1MB L2 (2x512KB)
* Kingston 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ecc CL5
* Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
* Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 Socket AM2 Nvidia MCP55P PCI-E 8 Channel audio ATX Motherboard
* Innovision Geforce 7300LE 256MB DDR2 PCI-E Graphics Card
* Second Slave Hard Drive
* A DVD RW Drive and CDRW Drive

One PC has an old 450 Watt Power Supply
The other has a brand new 650W power supply:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128675


Problem:

After working fine for a couple of months files started to randomly corrupt until one PC failed. The other PC followed a few weeks later with random files corrupting until the PC becomes unusable.

After reinstalling XP the same thing happens, and seems to be happening in a shorter and shorter time frame, from lasting a day, to now a matter of hours on the 4th reinstall.


I ran SeaTools both Short Test and Long Test but it said the drive passed.

I also Zero Filled the entire hard drive before doing a fresh reinstall but the problem still persisted with files quickly corrupting until XP wouldn't load. Also Zero filled with KillDisk and that went fine too.

It was not just XP files that corrupted but any random file on the hard drive was corrupting (but not on other slave hard drives or USB Drives).

I also suspected RAM so ran MemTest86+ overnight and it passed 21 tests.

So to sum up:

- Files Corrupting After fresh Installs
- RAM passed MemTest overnight Diagnostics
- Passed SeaTools long test and was Zero filled

What could this be? Someone told me to disable AHCI in the Bios as SeaGate drives dont support "native command queue" - however I can't find that option.

Any other ideas? Is the power supply enough?

Any help appreciated :)
 
Flash the BIOS on one of them with the latest update here

It could also be that the HDD and motherboards just dont like each other. Sounds silly but if i recall right I had a guy on another forum who's motherboard would not read his HDD he bought. He tried it on several other computers, they all read it just fine. He ended up RMAing the thing and the new one wouldnt work, so he bought a new HDD from a different brand, worked perfectly.

Ive been posting at many different computer forums, for almost three years, and this is by far the weirdest problem ive ever seen lol. Its also the best written post :D
 
Thanks for your help :)

I'd checked the BIOS version. I have the rev 2.0 version of the motherboard and the FF BIOS version. Since it is pretty up to date I have not tried updating it yet because I've never done it before - but may give it a go.

Some people are saying the Power Supply could be inadequate - do you not think that is the problem?
 
Thanks for your help :)

I'd checked the BIOS version. I have the rev 2.0 version of the motherboard and the FF BIOS version. Since it is pretty up to date I have not tried updating it yet because I've never done it before - but may give it a go.

Some people are saying the Power Supply could be inadequate - do you not think that is the problem?

even though it is a brand I've never heard of before I doubt it's the psu, even a cheap 350-400w psu should be able to power your system adequately, you have a slave hdd listed as well, have you done any virus scans on it...? a virus on that drive could infect your master drive no matter how many times you reformat and reinstall on the master...
 
Yeah one USB drive did have one infected file (found from a boot-time Avast scan) - but I got rid of it and the problem still persisted after reistall and main hard drive had not been infected anyway.
 
That's a strange one. Have you tried contacting Seagate support and telling them of the problem? There may be something wrong with the drives that SeaTools is missing.

From what I understand, Hitachi's Drive Fitness Tool will support drives other than Hitachi and is a very good drive testing utility.
 
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