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    M17X R3 freezes playing from 2nd HD only

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by techspy, Nov 2, 2011.

  1. techspy

    techspy Newbie

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    I have had my R3 about 2 months and love it. I have a 255gb SSD main drive factory installed and a 750gb Seagate 2nd HD that I installed. When playing music of vids from the 2nd HD, I get drop freezes every once in awhile. It may be one every 2 mins or may go 5-10 mins between. I have tried with a large HD video playing while listening to music, while monitoring in resource manager while running dpclat. Dpclat doesn't show any issues (maybe 3 red bars during 20 mins of running and they don't correspond to the freeze). I did a HD benchmark and it showed no problems. I can copy large files to/from the 2nd hard drive without any freezes/stops and it is fast. I can copy the same music to my SSD and play it and it doesn't ever freeze/stutter. Only happens when playing from my 2nd HD. I have also made sure no un-needed/strange apps are running and have made sure my performance/power saving settings are all on max performance. I have also updated my bios and drivers. I do have raid activated (not running raid, it was enable by default even when getting one HD installed from the factory). I tried disabling raid in the raid bios but it wouldn't boot so I had to change it back.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks
     
    techspy, Nov 2, 2011
    #1
  2. BlakeE450

    BlakeE450 Notebook Consultant

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    I'd like to bump this thread, as I also am having this exact problem with a very similar dual HDD setup in my M17x r3.


    Does anyone have any idea as to what we could try? Thank you!
     
    BlakeE450, Apr 3, 2012
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  3. techspy

    techspy Newbie

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    Turns out it was a faulty hard drive. Nothing I could do to fix it but a replacement hard drive worked fine. I think I remember finding other reports for my specific hard drive that indicated it was a know issue.
     
    techspy, Apr 3, 2012
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  4. BlakeE450

    BlakeE450 Notebook Consultant

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    Poo.

    Was it your drive that came from Dell or was it aftermarket? Any info would be great!
     
    BlakeE450, Apr 3, 2012
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  5. techspy

    techspy Newbie

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    Aftermarket Seagate purchased from Newegg. I was able to fill out the warranty request on Seagates website and they shipped a new one overnight (maybe 2 day air) and then I sent the bad one back in the same box.
     
    techspy, Apr 3, 2012
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  6. BlakeE450

    BlakeE450 Notebook Consultant

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    Ah, okay. Thank's for the info! :) Now I have to figure out a way to diagnose which drive is being faulty...
     
    BlakeE450, Apr 3, 2012
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  7. techspy

    techspy Newbie

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    I only had the delay issue when access the 2nd hard drive. If both of your drives are experiencing a delay/freeze, I would see if there is an update for the chipset and controller drivers.
     
    techspy, Apr 3, 2012
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