File Corruption Mystery

Negative · December 30, 2021

Hello!

I built my PC about a year ago and it ran fine until this issue started. A few months ago I started getting "Restart to Repair Drive Errors" messages on my PC. My PC was running fine and I wasn't noticing any issues other than the error message. I would allow the PC to restart and it would run chkdsk and repair files on the C: drive. Then the PC would run fine for a few days or weeks. Eventually the message would pop up again and I'd repeat the process. I did start to notice that some programs were developing corrupted files and needed to be repaired or reinstalled. Overall, it seemed to be a slow corruption process as I only found a few programs that appeared to have been corrupted.

After awhile, the issue became more frequent. The first thing I did was undo all my OC settings as I was running a very light OC. I then ran diagnostic scans on my SSD and ran Memtest on my RAM. All scans reported that those devices were running normally. Eventually the chkdsk repair failed and I had to do a full reinstall of Windows 10. This did not fix the problem either as the symptoms returned within a week. I finally decided to replace my SSD to see if that solved the issue, as I believed it to be the most likely culprit - I also updated my BIOS. I then reinstalled Win 10, but the problem returned after a week. A few days later I had to reinstall Win 10 again as the chkdsk repair failed.

Also, I am running 4 sticks of RAM and have tried swapping out pairs to see if one of the sticks was bad. Both sets resulted in the same issue so I don't believe that RAM is the issue.

At this point I'm assuming that I have a bad motherboard or CPU but I really have no idea which. Other than the Repair Drive Errors issue and C: file corruption, the PC runs very normally. I can play games without crashes (other than when I had to repair a game because some game files had corrupted). Has anyone ever experienced this or have any suggestions?

Potential Clues?

Around the time this started the Ethernet port on my Motherboard failed. I had to replace it with a PCIE network adapter.
One of the early symptoms I get, before I start seeing the "Restart to Repair Drive Errors" message, is that the PC won't wake from sleep and needs to be restarted. The "Restart to Repair" messages usually start showing up shortly after a couple of forced restarts.

System Components:

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard - MSI MEG x570 Unify AM4
RAM - Patriot Viper 8GB DDR4 4400 (x4)
SSD - Samsung M.2 970 Evo 1TB NVMe
Power Supply - Seasonic Focus GX-650 (650W)
Graphics Card - Radeon RX 5700 XT