I've experienced 8 hard disk failures in 3 months and have tried many things to solve the issue permanently but I have failed. I would like to know if you have any advice for me.
System was running Win XP on an Asus P5W-DH Deluxe. I have setup a RAID-1 array.
I started out with 2 x 500 GB 7200RPM Western Digital drives. One died. I took it out to RMA it. On the same day, the router was fried. Assumed a power surge occurred; connected an older UPS to protect the system.
Once I got my hands on an identical disk, I installed it. The RAID array was rebuilt.
A few days later, the other one died. Assumed the rebuild caused it to fail. Took it out for RMA. Before the other one arrived, the remaining one died.
I then discovered I could re-enable them using the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. I re-enabled both and the system seemed fine for a week, until both died again.
I got two new 1.5 TB 7200RPM Seagate drives and re-installed Windows 7. Also replaced the UPS and power supply. They both died again.
The voltage on the plug is stable between 120 and 122V as per the UPS. None of the other devices have had any problems (monitors, etc.).
At this point, I see two options:
a) electrical issue in the house that was, for some reason, not blocked by the UPS.
b) something else inside the system causing surges? motherboard? onboard raid controller?
Failures happen fairly quickly, between 2 and 14 days after I fix the previous issue.
I just gotten a new computer (Core i7) to replace it. If it is stable, I can determine that b) was the problem. If it fries its hard drive again, I can determine that it is an electrical issue in the house.
Do you have any other thoughts? Any tools I can run on the drives that failed to get more information about the original SMART event history?
