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I just upgraded my laptop's RAM yesterday and some weird things are happening because the memory module I bought on my local computer store is defective. Since the RAM isn't working properly, everytime I boot my laptop, it'll just turn off right after the Welcome screen of Windows 7.

I decided to take a look at my Hard Drive's SMART status and was surprised that the "UltraDMA CRC Error Count" reads 3...and it all happened ever since I slapped that faulty memory module into my laptop.

Right now, I was able to get my RAM replaced with a working one and decided to stress test my RAM and run a full surface scan on my hard drive with the "HD Tune Pro" utility. No errors on both RAM and hard drive.

Is it really possible that a faulty RAM could cause my HDD to get Ultra DMA CRC Errors?

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Yes. Faulty RAM could cause the controller to send invalid data which fails the CRC test on the drive. Faulty RAM can cause almost anything to go wrong because it can make the hardware do anything software can possibly command it to do. One very plausible way this can happen is if it causes the driver for the drive controller to set the wrong bus timings, clock settings, or UDMA mode on the controller.

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  • Can you give us a more technical explanation on how does the RAM communicate with the rest of the components of a computer? Do data bounce back and forth between the RAM and the Hard drive? A technical answer would be more desirable since I'm really curious on how this stuff happened.
    – Shawn K.
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 2:12
  • It's not easy to do that without requiring or replicating a lot of background material. But the point is that most of the code and data that a computer manipulates passes through the RAM at some point. So faulty RAM can cause the computer to do almost anything that software can command the hardware to do. Software can command the timings to be faster than will work reliably, resulting in CRC errors on the bus that the drive can detect.
    – David Schwartz
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 2:20
  • I understand your point that replicating the error would be problematic. I've seen the error happen myself and I do not want to see it again. Thanks for the informative answer!
    – Shawn K.
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 2:23
  • DMA tells the drive controller to read or write RAM directly instead of the CPU spoon-feeding data to the controller bytes at a time (that's PIO). If that RAM is failing, the wrong stuff is written or believed to be read, which later fails the CRC check. I think a RAM error causing misprogramming of the controller would be rare (but possible), but RAM errors that interfere with written or read data are more likely.
    – LawrenceC
    Commented Apr 6, 2014 at 2:48
  • I don't think RAM or CPU is used to calculate the CRC. I think the data is transported to the SATA controller and it adds the CRC which is checked through the SATA controller inside the HDD.
    – mgutt
    Commented Mar 25, 2021 at 16:48
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UltraDMA CRC Error are mostly caused by bad cables when you have kinks in it and not by RAM.

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