My Media Centre has been giving me gyp for a while. I decided to reinstall Windows a few weeks back as I was having some really weird problems with video codecs. Turns out, ffdshow doesn’t work well with Vista Media Center on dual core processors, and the video turns into a stuttery mess. It DID work, but suddenly decided it didn’t want to.
So I decided the best bet was to zap everything and start again. I reinstalled Windows, but the first problem I saw was said install took the best part of five hours to complete! Not good.
I reinstalled all the other junk and everything seemed OK, but I found the Bluray drive constantly reading itself. I first blamed the Pinnacle software that came with my TV card, but it wasn’t that. I noticed this in the Event log:
“Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued.”
This came from a process called ‘nvstor32′ – part of the onboard driver set. Every time this was in the event log, it coincided with the Bluray drive resetting itself, along with a quite pronounced stutter to the system whilst the hard drive and Bluray drives reset themselves.
Not good.
After half a dozen reinstalls of Windows, different drivers, BIOSes, settings, and LOTs of arm waiving and cursing – I was nowhere. I was still seeing these errors. As soon as I put any sort of decent disk activity onto the thing, it dropped out. This included just basic TV recording, which actually isn’t all that disk intensive at all.
This weekend, I ran the Seagate tools on it, to test the drive out. Passed all round. It was obviously a software issue, as the system worked ‘OK’ if I used the stock Microsoft drivers. The downside with them was that when playing DVDs, the Bluray drive wouldn’t buffer – it would constantly read the disc, and make an awful noise whilst doing so. Similarly, the hard disk was constantly chuntering away to itself for no good reason. Install the drivers, and those things go away (and things speed up) BUT, the resets problem would creep in.
So I decided to go a bit mad, and buy a completely different hard disk for it. All my SATA drives are Seagates, and I wanted to try a completely different make, as well as model. I took myself down to PC World, and ended up buying a Hitachi Deskstar! Yes really! I never thought it’d happen either. Obviously I paid a wee bit more, but I did get to try it there and then.
Some frantic reinstalling later, and thus far, it’s all working fine. I also made sure to replace the SATA cables too, as I know they can cause odd problems if they’re damaged. The cables were new with the motherboard, but it doesn’t hurt to try.
The new drive isn’t half bad though. It’s very quiet, and performs just as well as the Seagate. As far as reliability goes, only time will tell. I’d like to think this one will change my perception of Deskstars. I’m sure it will though.
So, if you too have a Seagate 7200.10 SATA drive, on a nForce 610a-chipset motherboard, and you see the resets, it might be worth trying another hard disk. Bit annoying, but I know the drive will get used somewhere.