Can mobo kill HDD? RMA for DFI. No longer available in North America?

[chartkor]

First question I want to ask: Is it possible that I have motherboard that kills harddrives? I already lost 2 Samsungs F1 within a year. I had all kinds of problems which I thought were all hard drive related, like booting stuck on code 75 for good 15 minutes sometimes, USB devices not recognized properly, My SATA DVD-ROM not showing up under My Computer...
When I had my first Samsung F1 i had this problem of USB devices not being recognized properly which started in September 2009 with my Xbox Controller wireless receiver (hard drive had about 3-4 months then) Then I started experiencing 75 showing up on mobo's led display, shortly after that hard drive died as BIOS stopped seeing it. I have sent my F1 to RMA around the end of October and received a new one after not even 1.5 week from sending the broken one. (working on 20GB Maxtor with Ubuntu in the meantime)
So now, like 1.5 mont ago my second F1 started breaking down, Again started experiencing USB problems, not a single device that I have was working (mouse, printer, memory sticks, back then I still suspected only hard drive to fail) I didn't want to wait for it to go down completely. I checked SMART and it gave me B8 and 05 (both are fatal) I transfered all my data to old 40GB Caviar and RMAed Samsung again. And as Canadian Samsung service being pretty good I got a new one in less than 2 weeks. When I received it in early December I decided that I can't stand this crap any longer and sold it for $50 on kijiji, planning on buying Hitachi 7K1000C (which I am going to do this Monday probably) In the meantime I am running Ubuntu on 20GB Maxtor just like the last time. Well, everything was running pretty smooth under penguin until yesterday when I connected my mom's Garmin nuvi GPS unit. It started charging the battery in GPS, but suddenly my deathadder 3500 stopped working (other USB devices like my flashdrive were working fine) I had to reset motherboard using the jumper on the back to make DeathAdder work again. I calmed down thinking that Linux just doesn't like my mom's GPS. I had some 75 prior to that but I ignored that and blamed the hard drive being old. But few hours ago when decided to listen to some Black Sabbath () from the CD, after playing few songs DVD drive disappeared from my computer and stopped working.
Motherboard from signature, DK P45 T2RS

So now, after this long story mobo is the main suspect as you can see.
For those who don't know the DFI mobos error codes 75 means:
-Initializng storage devices (probing for IDE or SATA devices) Possible cause:
1. Lost power source of some devices
2. Incompatible SATA or PATA device
3. CD-ROM spin took too long.

Do you think that BIOS update will fix that, as I never performed it?

BTW:
Somebody knows what the hell actually happened with DFI RMA for north america? It is availble only to few countries in Europe... link in the RMA info thread is broken, the page is no longer existing...

[_dangtx_]

its remotely possible if the voltages coming thru are screwed, for exemple. like from your psu, close to the spec or over? :)

ive seen psus kill the rest of the pc.


nice avatar btw

[chartkor]

PSU from signature bro. I believe that 700W OCZ is more than enough for this config... ;)

[_dangtx_]

its not the rated wattage, its the way its delivered, as in perhaps not so clean.

the mod pro's were decent, nothing major though. i wouldnt be surprised if it threw noise on the scopes,well more than it should.

[chartkor]

Well, you asked if it meets the spec requirements, so I answered, yes it does. The problem is that I don't have any other good PSU to compare, my brother has one from FSP, but its to weak though, only 250W.
So the only thing that remains is to buy a digital multimeter and check power supply unit, but decent ones cost a lot, and spending my money for the thing that doesn't have to solve my problem is the last thing I want to do...

[KaptCrunch]

first remove power cord and push start to empty caps, then reset cmos and remove cmos battery 3mins.

power up an set your settings in cmos, reboot and an if same issue then try a known good video card

also check the pci-e power connections and MB 4/8 connectors from your PSU

[chartkor]

???
Why would I do that when I have motherboard/HDD related problem and my GPU works perfectly fine?

[frontier204]

The part you explained about the GPS unit crashing everything USB on your machine sounds like a PSU (on the +5V line) or motherboard issue. It sounds like something's not delivering enough current on the +5V line, or delivering a dirty +5V. A multimeter won't help you much anyway because what's probably crashing everything is spikes on the line that a multimeter can't see.

Try all of your peripherals (headset, the GPS, etc) on another PC just to be sure that you don't have a bugged peripheral as well. If all that works, then you're looking at a power supply or motherboard replacement. I'm thinking power supply and not motherboard is the problem though, since it's a lot easier for a power supply to kill a hard drive (by sending spikes or overvoltage through the power cable) that it is for a motherboard to do the same, as its only connection to the hard drive is the SATA signal cable.

[chartkor]

Well, but the issue didn't look like lack of power on 5v since yesterday only deathadder stopped working and flash drive was working fine. And what a bout other issues I had pc stuck on 75 for a good minute today, way too long.

Are you guys 100% sure that this was the PSU fault?

[_dangtx_]

it can be, we can only speculate at this point. ether way, its probably power related, be it from said psu or mobo.

someone will upgrade soon i think :)