Can a faulty motherboard cause HDD problems?

[i.t-works]

Hi Everyone,

I've got a problem that maybe more experienced techs can help me out with.

Two months ago a client called me, complaining that his computer was slow. As soon as I arrived onsite, it was clear that the disk was failing. Event Viewer pointed to a bad block on the hard drive, S.M.A.R.T also indicated an imminent drive failure.

So I took the computer home and imaged the drive with ddrescue, bought a new drive, and installed the new drive. Chkdsk found some logical errors, which it fixed up and the computer was fine.

On Monday the same client called again reporting the same symptoms.
I brought the computer home, and S.M.A.R.T indicated bad sectors. I imaged the drive again - no errors were reported. Now I am going to replace the drive but my question is why did the problem happen again?

At the moment I am thinking that the new hard drive was faulty. If the motherboard was faulty wouldn't it just give logical errors (corrupt data when writing to the drive) instead of damaging the drive (indicated by SMART)?

 

[franky]

yes it can

well i would recommend you run a diagnostics of the hard drive on a different computer it will let u scan it with out it being used constantly most computers have a diagnostic utility to check the hard drive.

i have seen motherboards cause very odd problems incl. but not limited to not recognizing a specific hard drive and after a reset of cmos the problem dissapeared

 

[brundle]

If you haven't already done so, check/replace the drive data cable - especially if it's a cheap SATA cable with no metal clips to hold it firmly in place at the connector ends.

 

[i.t-works]

Already replaced the data cable

The client is going to buy another computer (since this one has caused him alot of problems in the past)

 

[joydivision]

I have had a machine (I still need to RMA the hard drive otherwise I am out of pocket) which keeps failing the drive. Its had four hard drives in the past three years. The PSU is fine (tested it with a tester etc) and I have changed the data cables.

Its one of them dells were the HD is installed upside, so I have modified the case and it now sits upright and touch wood it appears to still be working.