High HDD write throughput causing system restart on HTPC?

AaronTC05 · 03-04-2009, 12:29 PM

I built a home theater pc (HTPC) recently with the following specs:

MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU:AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor
HDD: Western Digital Caviar GP WD7500AACS 750GB 5400 to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Memory: Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
Case/PSU: Antec Minuet350 Piano Black Steel MicroATX Slim Case Computer Case 350W 80PLUS Certified Power Supply
TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 PCI-Express x1 Interface

I installed Windows Vista Home Premium just fine and have been playing around with Media Center. Whenever I view live TV in Media Center, the hard drive churns a lot and I can see via performance monitor lots of write activity (since Media Center is acting as a DVR and essentially recording the video to disk), and within 1-10 minutes the system will reboot leaving no traces in the Event Logs. The only traces of the shutdown I have are messages in the Reliability Monitor under Miscellaneous Failures saying:
"Disruptive Shutdown, Version 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1, The computer was not shut down properly"

I have narrowed it down to this singular scenario which causes this to occur. I can watch TV through another program that isn't recording it and everything runs smoothly for long periods of time. I can watch locally saved video just fine also and CPU temps and usage is still really low. It just seems to occur when recording video (not even HD, just standard def) from the TV tuner. Otherwise the system has great up-time.

I'm leaning toward this being a hard drive issue based on all the tests I've done, but I'm not 100% sure it isn't a power issue, although I have unplugged all other powered devices so that the only things plugged in to the power supply are the motherboard and the disk drive.

Does this sound like a disk issue? Is there another way I can re-create this amount of data being written to the disk to verify that it is the disk that is bad and not anything related to the TV card? Is there anything else that could be a suspect?

Thanks!
Aaron

03-04-2009, 12:29 PM	#1 (permalink)
AaronTC05 Registered User Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 2 OS: Vista	High HDD write throughput causing system restart on HTPC? I built a home theater pc (HTPC) recently with the following specs: MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard CPU:AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor HDD: Western Digital Caviar GP WD7500AACS 750GB 5400 to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive Memory: Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Case/PSU: Antec Minuet350 Piano Black Steel MicroATX Slim Case Computer Case 350W 80PLUS Certified Power Supply TV Tuner: Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 PCI-Express x1 Interface I installed Windows Vista Home Premium just fine and have been playing around with Media Center. Whenever I view live TV in Media Center, the hard drive churns a lot and I can see via performance monitor lots of write activity (since Media Center is acting as a DVR and essentially recording the video to disk), and within 1-10 minutes the system will reboot leaving no traces in the Event Logs. The only traces of the shutdown I have are messages in the Reliability Monitor under Miscellaneous Failures saying: "Disruptive Shutdown, Version 6.0.6001 Service Pack 1, The computer was not shut down properly" I have narrowed it down to this singular scenario which causes this to occur. I can watch TV through another program that isn't recording it and everything runs smoothly for long periods of time. I can watch locally saved video just fine also and CPU temps and usage is still really low. It just seems to occur when recording video (not even HD, just standard def) from the TV tuner. Otherwise the system has great up-time. I'm leaning toward this being a hard drive issue based on all the tests I've done, but I'm not 100% sure it isn't a power issue, although I have unplugged all other powered devices so that the only things plugged in to the power supply are the motherboard and the disk drive. Does this sound like a disk issue? Is there another way I can re-create this amount of data being written to the disk to verify that it is the disk that is bad and not anything related to the TV card? Is there anything else that could be a suspect? Thanks! Aaron