[max53000]

Greetings,

I am a newby who has grown weary of enduring data corruption problems in the 18 months since I purchased my computer. Here are the details:

My computer is a liquid cooled HP Blackbird 002, with an Intel Core2 Extreme Quad Core Q6850 3GHz processor factory overclocked to 3.3GHz, which came with 4 x 1GB unmatched sticks of 1066MHz DDR2 Corsair Dominator ram, and Vista Ultimate 32.

Suffice it to say that I have not had the opportunity to try increasing the memory speed from the factory's 800 MHz factory setting because of multiple data corruption problems.

One week after receiving my new computer, I discovered that it had data corruption problems, indirectly by the failure of Acronis True Image software to validate a newly created partition image file.

I called HP technical support about it and was told that Acronis needed to update its SATA drivers to the latest version. I emailed Acronis support and was informed that while an SATA update did exist, almost always, the failure of validation of a newly created Acronis True Image file was an indicator of a computer hardware problem.

To sum up, four sticks of memory and two ASUS Striker Extreme motherboards failed during the first year. HP paid all charges to have the computer shipped from Texas to Canada and back twice for motherboard replacement. HP completely replaced the 4 1GB memory sticks both times.

Afterward HP extended my warranty coverage for another year. And recently at my urging HP sent me a new 1100 watt replacement power supply after I pointed out that the original didn't quite meet the acceptable variance limit on the 12 V line for ATX certified power supplies.

After the computer was returned to me the second time, I purchased two sets of matched pairs of 2 GB DDR2 1066 MHz Corsair Dominator memory together with Corsair's provided add-on triple cooling fan and a new 10,000 rpm Western Digital (WD) boot drive.

Then I ran WD's bootable diagnostic program to certify operation of all the hard drives, ran Memtest.org's Memtest86+ v2.11 bootable memory diagnostic for 20 full cycles in 24 hours without an error, and installed fresh copies of Windows 7 Ultimate Beta 64, which I recently upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate RC 64, and OEM Vista Ultimate 64.

Again, the only direct proof I have so far that corruption is still occurring is in the recurring failure of newly created Acronis True Image partition image files of my Windows 7 64 partition made from inside Windows Vista 64 to validate with more than one stick of 2 GB memory installed on memory channel 1 and no memory installed on memory channel 2, and in the steadily increasing number of blue screens I have encountered in Vista 64 independent of the memory loading.

The same blue screen error #109 (64 bit Corrupted Data Structure) inside Windows Vista 64 has begun to appear three or four times a day. I have submitted regular Microsoft error reports and yet received no helpful response. (Vista 64 was rock steady for about four weeks after it was first installed.)

Days before doing the reduced memory experiment, I had run Mersenne.org's Prime95 64 bit four core cpu torture test for six hours at its default settings without any of the core temperatures exceeding 160 F and without a single error in any core.

Because of the unacceptable level of operating system instability, I have had to abandon the Vista 64 and switch to the newly installed Windows 7 64. (I never had the chance to test channel 2 memory by itself or combined with channel 1 memory inside Windows Vista 64.)

To create a restorable copy of my only remaining good operating system, I have used Acronis Disk Director installed inside Windows 7 64 to copy the Windows 7 64 partition to a backup partition on another hard drive. Perhaps this way I can copy the copy back when necessary to reverse the expected Windows 7 64 data corruption long enough to isolate the cause.

I wish to prove to HP that a data corruption problem still exists and petition that company to take back their defective computer and either refund my purchase price or give me a free upgrade to their latest computer model.

Under the circumstances I do not believe that is too much to ask for. Effectively, this computer has, In my opinion, satisfied the definition of being a lemon for the past eighteen months.

My strategy for the time being will be to try moving a 100 GB file back and forth between different Windows partitions seeking to demonstrate that the calculated SHA512 hash is not constant after one or two moves. I welcome other suggestions on how best to proceed.

I fully realize that after I can prove the data corruption, I will probably have to restore the HP computer back to its original factory configuration in order to prepare it for return to HP for either a full refund or a free upgrade.

[Scleros]

Comments:

• All of the independent test suites run from a clean boot don't indicate a hardware issue. Do you have the latest Windows drivers for 64 for all your hardware?
  
  
• I have run into the case a couple times with Acronis where a validation that is selected during the imaging wizard fails but one or more validations done manually independently after the image is created succeeds. An Acronis quirk? Try validation independently.
  
  
• It is critical to have the latest Acronis updates. I had to try several different builds to find one that worked properly with HP's 7800 series SATA when they were first released.

[Helljack6]

And that would be acronis true image for you. I've heard of these issues a lot since x64 platform came out, mostly everything I have heard revolves around Acronis failing on the x64 platform.

I personally use a program called IFL (Image for Linux), runs like Ghost, reliable like any other disk imaging software, but guaranteed to be 100% platform accessible, I've imaged regular FAT32, NTFS both x32 and x64 and have yet to have an issue with the software. Check it out and get away from Acronis.

www.terabytesunlimited.com