3TB Seagate Barracuda - Strange problems

[andy3471]

Hey, I recently self built a new PC which contains an AMD 8350, Radeon HD 7850, 32GB of Corsair vengeance ram with a GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 Motherboard. I am using the Seagate 3TB HDD as well as a Sandisk ReadyCache SSD. I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit.

The HDD is partitioned to be 2TB for windows, with a further 750GB partitioned and mounted to my steam install (I have a lot of games). The disk is in AHCI mode and is usally fully functional. The SSD is running as a cache currently, and does not show as a drive. The problem is every so often mutliple applications freeze simultaniously (this happens more frequently the more I do stuff). It's not really a freeze, but anything to do with file transfers stop, any downloads pause, web browser pages stop loading, file transfers stop, any attempt to open a file will not happen. So I decided to take a look at My Computer when this problem next occurred, and the HDD showed like this :

Notice how the HDD also says 400GB remaining, considering this is a brand new install on a 2TB HDD. If I refreshed this, I saw a completely different and random amount of storage remaining. About 20 seconds later, the HDD shows the correct amount of storage left, and anything continues again. My external expansion drive shows fine here too.

A long generic check on Seagate Seatools shows a pass on the HDD.

This problem is becoming a huge annoyance and I just wondered if anyone knew what this is about, and how I can go about fixing this.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Golden]

Hi,

Did you format the disk as GPT or MBR? Is your motherboard using BIOS or UEFI?

Please do the following as well:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

Regards,
Golden

 

[andy3471]

The motherboard uses bios, and this uses MBR. The motherboard says "with Hybrid EFI technology for 3TB HDD support" if that has relevance.

Ignore the first drive, as this is the SSD, and ignore the expansion. The disk shows at 2 drives (The 2TB one, and the 746GB one called "Steam") despite being one, I've had to use the seagate disk tools to do this, however the problem was occurring before doing this.

 

[essenbe]

Maybe I don't understand the problem, but you say ignore the Disk 0 it's the SSD. It has no drive letter and neither does the disk 2 'steam' drive. neither will show in explorer without a drive letter.

On your drive that says Steam in the bottom portion of the screen, right click it and select 'change drive letter or path', next screen select add, and give it a drive letter. It should show up then. If it wants to format it, you will lose your data.

 

[andy3471]

The problem isn't to do with those drives, that's why I said to ignore them. The SSD is being used as a Cache, so I don't need a drive letter, and the "Steam" partition it mounted to my steam directory in program files. The Steam partition is on the same disk as the 2TB windows partition, but this shows incorrectly as I have used seatools to make use of the 3TB on my HDD, as windows could only install to a 2TB partition.

The problem is the fact my main HDD causes crashes on my PC, as all processes that require any sort of download or file transfer simultaneously stops, and my HDD shows a strange amount of storage remaining. After 30 seconds or so it returns to normal. However this problem has become so frequent it is becoming a right pain :/

 

[jta582]

Have same problem... tested it for months... it`s about how mother board is handling hdd and surge protection of mother board... if you have more "noise" on power network... the mother board will hang up... hang ups is precisely 60sec..
it`s stupid bug... and only thing to do is buy another mother board... or try with ups to negate "noise"
allso this mother board have huge problem with USB 3.0... so recommend everyone , not to by this peace of crap...

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Digging up an old thread

Funny reading it I'm wondering why anyone would not install the os on the ssd
Seems a tad silly installing windows on a 2tb hdd when they have wasted a ssd :/

 

[jta582]

Hi and welcome to SevenForums,
Digging up an old thread

Funny reading it I'm wondering why anyone would not install the os on the ssd
Seems a tad silly installing windows on a 2tb hdd when they have wasted a ssd :/

i have system on ssd... but... it`s not it... simply motherboard is bad

 

[essenbe]

Mike, some motherboards are made to use a 30GB SSD as a cache for the OS. It is similar to a ram disk. It stores the most used progrem .exe files so that those programs start up faster, kind of like the Hybrid hard drives. You get the best of both worlds, speed and a lot of storage. I believe it is called Intel Rapid Start. I've never used it and wouldn't. But that's the way they are designed to work.

 

[ThrashZone]

Thanks I did not notice how small the ssd was
Glad prices of ssd's dropped over the years made life a lot more straight forward