Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Resolved Question

Fried SATA port, beginning of the end?

Jul 4, 2018 11:36AM PDT

Long story short: I want to know if my mobo is soon to be dead or if the problem is contained to the single faulty SATA port.

The story goes like this:
I've been trouble shooting my PC lately to solve why it randomly deadlocks (frozen screen, no mouse movement, no activity on caps lock). After much googling and reading I came to the conclusion that it had to a failing HDD or the motherboard. After a cleaning and more testing today I discovered that the SATA port connected to the C drive was the culprit. Before it would randomly deadlock a couple times a week, but today my PC began with not being able to find the HDD. A couple restarts later it would boot and then promptly shutdown. I tried new and known working cables with the same problem, the only resolve was moving the cable to a different port.

Its kind of a old motherboard, last bios update was back in 2015; MSI 970A-G4.

Discussion is locked

Bradimus has chosen the best answer to their question. View answer

Best Answer

- Collapse -
So yes.
Jul 4, 2018 12:38PM PDT

A failed SATA port can lead to many odd and hard to explain problems. I can't guess if the failing port is in a chip that is failing or something else so it's your choice to change the motherboard (I would) or stop using that port.

- Collapse -
TY
Jul 4, 2018 2:54PM PDT

Thank you for your advice.