Latest NVIDIA SATA Driver update trashes hard drives!

Been running Vista since end of January, when I installed the NVidia platform drivers (v15). Before that, during testing, had disk corruption problems. After updating the Nvidia SATA drivers, didn't have any more problems.



Then, two days ago, installed a routine Windows update for Nvidia drivers. In the last two days, have had a forced CHKDSKs upon booting each day. Checked the driver version last night and discovered that Update replaced the "old" v931 drivers with a "new" v832 driver.



Checked the Nvidia site. Latest SATA Driver is v931; they show no v832.



Ran Seagates utility (SeaTools) against the hard drives. Took all night to run but found no errors whatsoever. Also, S.M.A.R.T. is enabled on both drivers, and neither one was "tripped".



So, have done a driver Rollback to v931. Rebooted the machine. Did not get a CHKDSK this time. Only time will tell if the problem has been fixed.



So, if you see this Nvidia Driver Update popping up in Windows Update, don't install it.

 

That is interesting that a driver would effect your HD like that.

 

OK, but "interesting" is not the word that came to mind when I discovered that my driver had been trashed.



I did do a little more research on the driver replacement and discovered that the build 832 drivers actually have a slightly newer time/date stamp than the build 931 drivers. So, in all fairness to Windows Update, it was only doing what it's been designed to do -- replace an "older" driver with a "newer" driver. The problem is that some idiot put the wrong date/time stamp on the "older" drivers, and unfortunately, there's no way to check those before you apply the update. What Windows Update should really do is base the update on the version number of the drivers -- but that's difficult because, in many cases, there are multiple files, each with a different version number.



At least the "good" news is that Rollback driver not only worked, but it didn't break Activation -- as it used to.

 

Update on the situation. Rolling back the drivers didn't "fix" the hard drive -- I still encountered forced CHKDSKs. So, I had to do the following:

1) Back off the directories and files to an external drive

2) Use GetDataBack for NTFS to recover the lost files

3) Reformat the drive

4) Copy the files and directories back from the external drive

5) Restore the recovered files.



It's been nearly a week now, and not a single disk corruption since. So, it looks like the Nvidia SATA IDE drivers (and Windows Update) were clearly the problem!

 

Thanks! I was about to install the updated drivers - wont bother now! That is so weird, ive been putting it off cause i dont wanna restart my PC (i like just putting it to sleep).

This problem could affect lots of people. Hope it gets fixed before I slip up and install them anyway.

 

Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to be "fixed". It's clearly a Windows Update-related problem in installing an older driver over a newer one. I went to the Nvidia site, and the closest driver version I could find to the 8.32 "new" version is v8.22 -- and that's an XP driver from January of 2006. The 32-bit Vista drivers are v9.31 -- the "older" version than came out in February of this year.



The painful lesson to me was to make a disk backup before I install any "updated" disk drivers -- something I'll be sure to do next time.



I really feel sorry for the Vista users that have automatic updates turned on and don't even know that such changes were made.

 

CRAP!!! I just installed that update last night.

 

Since you have the A8N32-SLI mobo, suggest you go to the nForcers forum and check under drivers. One of the members posted some new Nvidia SATA drivers (v9.92). I've been using them for two weeks now without any data corruptions.



The URL is: http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/