W150ERQ problems with HDDs, SATA 3, and S.M.A.R.T.

It's been a while since I had to visit the forums.

So I had to reinstall windows because I got into a bit of a mess and corrupted my user profile. Reinstalled it. Unfortunately while moving my files I found out my larger disk, the one where I keep all my files (I have a small SSD, and a larger terabyte) was breaking down. It had a whole bunch of bad sectors. The SSD is fine though. The thing is I stumbled upon even weirder problems. No program wants to read the SMART data off any hard drives on this computer. Intel Rapid Storage Technology still gave me a stupid uninformative warning (way late), so SMART is working, but I just can't see the disk health through any third part programs, even Intel's own program which I didn't know existed until now, cannot read the SMART data off it's own SSD. I couldn't google the problem because google just ignores the fact that SMART is an acronym, even with dots and " ".

Anyways, so I ordered a replacement. Now to my understanding the model I have, both ports are SATA III. So I ordered a SATA III disk. My computer just would not recognize it. The bios would, and so would third party programs like HD Tune Pro (I had the trial), but it wouldn't show up under the disk management to initialize or format. I decided to try plugging the disk in to another computer. I opened the laptop up again, took the disk to another computer, initialized and formatted it there, and everything was perfect! Took it back to mind and now the drivers installed fine. The computer could even read the SMART data which mine still cannot. It's really weird.

Everything is working fast but I can't help the nagging thought that something is wrong and also that I'm not getting SATA III speeds. HD Tune Pro said the SSD was running with SATA 3 and the new HDD with SATA 2.6. But when the trial expired and I had to use the regular version it said BOTH were SATA II and something about ATA, I'm not sure what that is, I'm not very versed in that area, which is why I'm here. It's weird. Is my model SATA III capable or not? It's one of the first ones, when it just came out. I was the one who posted the first pictures, but if I remember correctly only the Optical Bay was SATA II.

I checked read/write speeds on the SSD with something else, and they're as follows:

Read / Write
Seq. 420 / 82
512K 370 / 80
4K 28 / 55
4KQD32 100 / 75

Not sure what they mean... but thought they might help....

I'm thinking it might be a bios problem...but the bios can see the disks... and prostar who I bought the computer from, don't have any bios updates on their site. I was going to take a look at the bios thread, but I'm afraid of bricking my laptop permanently when it works fine... for now. And I really need it. I can't have it break as I'm outside of the country and already just getting the replacement HDD was a mess. Any help/info would be appreciated.

 

your first thing to do is contact prostar support while you wait for more replys as they are the experts.

looking at those read/write speeds are defo iffy if thats from an ssd.

things to download.
try hard disc sentinel trial which is much better than hd tune Hard Disk Sentinel Trial version - HDD health and temperature monitoring

also download crystal disc mark which will give the read/write speeds http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...rything-you-need-monitor-your-temps-more.html

all a drive needs is 1 or 2 bad sectors and your drive is almost buggered. i had major problems on my previous drive with just 2 bad sectors and it wasnt repairable or even usable ater they occured.

 

The max read numbers you would get with SATA II would be 270MB/sec so your 420 shows SATA III is working. Your slow write speeds are just down to smaller SSDs being slower.

 

I'll go to support as a last resort...

I'll try Hard Disk Sentinal, but none of the things I tried could get temperature readings.

The read writes were from crystal disk mark, I just had the shortcut named to read -write check.

Great to hear SATA III is at least working on the SSD.

The replacement Terabyte is giving me an insane headache. I copied all my things. Now it could have gotten a bit hot. It was a lot of stuff and Teracopy got stuck so I had to switch to FastCopy. But it was fine for a while, like perfectly okay, and then transfer speeds where at 0.1 MBs everywhere! It wouldn't go above that. And now it has a bunch of bad sectors, Now it goes between 0.1 and average speed (I'm assuming it's hitting bad sectors). I'm doing a full scan at the moment. I'm going to return it. Not in time for the return, but the warranty should cover it. I can't believe this... ugh. It has more problems than the failing drive it was meant to replace.

Edit: Just curious, why do smaller SSDs have slower write speeds?

 

hard disc sentinel has a temperature monitor that sits on the task bar. 50c is average and 60c is bad

 

Smaller ssds have less chips to populate all the channels. Its like running system memory in single channel mode.

 

Okay, so Hard Disk Sentinel Worked. The new disk never got too hot as I had suspected, so it wasn't an overheating problem. I wiped it as best I could, it failed on me completely (clicking noises, 0% health), and I've returned it.

Is there a reason HDS is working but not anything else? What's going on there? Why can't other programs see SMART data and temps? Also just where in HDS can I check if SATA 3 is running, it's a bit confusing... I don't have any SATA 3 HDDs left. I've moved my data off the old terabyte and between two older smaller HDDs because the Terabyte went from 76% health down to 0% (but still works). All three of those are SATA 2, but when I do get a replacement terabyte I want to know if it's working.

 

i had same issue. hd tune showed nothing but hds pro showed 2 bad sectors and that was enough to cause nightmares for my previous drive.
its a good bit of software even if you only wanted it for the temperature monitor.

 

What I don't get is how come HDS can see all the disk's health but for example Intel's own SSD monitor tool couldn't see my SSD, I mean it could see it, but it said it couldn't read any of the smart data, same thing with Hitachi and Seagate's own software on their own drives!

Oh well, at least I'm not blind now and I can monitor my disk. All the other ones are in perfect condition. Still want to know how I can know if SATA III is working. What would be SATA 3 speeds on a regular HDD? If I can't figure it out by looking at all the technical stuff I can at least do a speed test when the replacement disk arrives.

 

Use HWinfo, then expand "Drives" and the program should tell you what sATA generation/speed the drive controller is. HDDs don't really saturate sATA gen 2 speeds, let alone sATA gen 3.

 

Also some HDDs are still SATA II as well so even if its in a SATA III slot it will be in SATA II mode.