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Optiplex 755 (2008) - Multiple machines physically corrupting brand new hard drives repeatedly.
We purchased 14 Dell Optiplex 755’s in December of 2008 and distributed 9 to our west coast office and 5 to our east coast office. The 9 computers in our west coast office have been working fine and continue to do so while the 5 computers within our east coast office have all had repeated hard drive issues. These issues typically make themselves known by the systems becoming unable to boot and occur every 1-3 months. Sometimes running a chkdsk against the drives will make the systems work again but we have learned that this is short term and the problems will reappear within a day or two so we don’t rely on this. We have run hardware diagnostics (both Dell and hard drive manufacturer specific) against the drives and they have consistently reported as having actual physical issues. We have purchased brand new hard drives 3 separate times and with different manufacturers (a mixture of Western Digital and Seagate). When the computers crash we take a new hard drive, apply a Ghost image to it with our standard load of software, and then add it to the domain and finish configuring them for the end user. The image we are using is the exact same image we are using for our west coast office and we have applied that image to a test machine here (west coast office) and the system has been running without issue so it is not an image introducing issues to the drive.
We just had one of these systems start having issues again this morning with the following event log entries:
Event ID 9, Source: iaStor
The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.
Event ID 51, Source: disk
An error was detected on device \Device\Harddisk0\D during a paging operation.
It was originally thought that perhaps a power surge or some other physical interference was occurring so all of these systems have been connected to surge protectors but the issue continues to resurface. I have never experienced issues like this across so many systems at one time so am at a loss as to possible causes/solutions. Please let me know if I can provide any further information or clarification. Any help or ideas are much appreciated.
RoHe
10 Elder
10 Elder
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44.3K Posts
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April 24th, 2012 12:00
Do they all have the same version of BIOS installed?
Have you seen this?
speedstep
9 Legend
9 Legend
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47K Posts
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April 24th, 2012 12:00
I found this issue to be related to the driver and BIOS version and not the hardware.
The Intel 82801G RAID driver and Current BIOS. Update the Intel Storage driver and check your
HDD with chkdsk /r /f for errors before attempting to swap hardware as it could save you a bunch of time and energy.
Event Type: Error ,Event Source: iaStor , Event Category: None , Event ID: 9
Description: The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.
www.intel.com/.../CS-025783.htm
The following issues may occur on Windows with a supported Intel® RAID controller hub:
Unable to install Windows (system halts during installation)
Performance degradation
Timeout errors reported by iastor or iastor(v) in Microsoft Event Viewer*
Solution
Install Intel® Matrix Storage Manager version 7.5 or later. These versions workaround the issue by disabling Link Power Management (LPM).
If you are still experiencing installation issues, try one of the following workarounds:
If available, install updated device firmware.
Attach the device(s) to ports 3-5 on the Intel® 82801HR/HH/HO I/O controller hub (ICH8R) or port 3 on the Intel® 82801GR/GH I/O controller hub (ICH7R)
Switch to IDE mode in the system BIOS.
Note
This change disables RAID functionality. Contact your BIOS manufacturer for instructions on how to switch to IDE mode.
Cause
Microsoft changed the Windows setup process. This change added the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager LPM registry settings for mobile installations, to desktop installations as well. LPM registry settings are added for the Intel® Matrix Storage Manager RAID driver on the Windows installation disk, and for any drivers added during the installation.
Some desktop Serial ATA devices, such as hard drives and CD/DVD drives are not complying with the Serial ATA LPM device specification. They can display erratic behavior when LPM is enabled.
The setup change means LPM is enabled by default for all Windows Vista platforms. Using a device that does not completely follow the specification might result in one of the issues listed.
A list of devices is not available at this time.
This applies to:
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology
SpiritCat
3 Posts
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April 24th, 2012 13:00
They do have an older BIOS (that was shipped with them). I will update the BIOS to the latest version and watch. I hadn't seen the info at the link you sent but will take a look at those settings in the registry as well. Thanks.
SpiritCat
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April 24th, 2012 13:00
Thank you for the information. I will update the BIOS with the latest and see how that works. The Intel information specifically mentions version 7.5 or newer of teh Matrix Storage Manager software and I have confirmed that they are currently running 7.8. RoHe provided a link to information specifying specific registry keys that can be used to disable the LPM feature so I will check on that first before installing a newer version of software.
speedstep
9 Legend
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April 25th, 2012 13:00
Microsoft has an Autofix for the controller issue.
Consider the following scenario. In the BIOS setup of a Microsoft Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer, you change the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) mode of the boot drive to use the either Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) specification or RAID features. You then restart the computer. In this scenario, you receive the following error message:
Microsoft Fix it 50470
Note this wizard may be in English only; however, the automatic fix also works for other language versions of Windows.
Note If you are not on the computer that has the problem, you can save the automatic fix to a flash drive or to a CD so that you can run it on the computer that has the problem.