Hard Drive Troubles

[BroDan]

Not quite sure where to start on this one

 

I have the following PC:

 

A64 3200

1gb DDR PC4200 ram

128mb Geforce 6600GT

 

120gb Maxtor SATA HD

 

I built this PC in June 2004, no problems at all, never had to re-format once, was running perfectly until a few months ago, what happened what I added a 2nd HD to my PC, another 120gb but this was a standard IDE cabled drive... my PC is set to boot from the SATA anyway and the other is a slave on a different part all together.

 

I don't think the 2nd hard drive is the problem because what happened was when I was transferring large ammounts of stuff from one to the other I got a blue screen of death, I don't think the 2nd HD caused this because my PC was doing strange things before that anyway... failing to boot properly, etc.

 

I re-formatted the C: SATA drive about a month ago and everything has gone fine, no crashes, nothign like that... able to move stuff from one HD to another (even 4gb+ files) without any trouble.

 

Then yesterday I got home and my PC had re-started, I use utorrent (legally) and when I opened it, it froze and just blue screened my PC... )it also resets all ym firefox looks and bookmarks) this happened with Azureus before I re-formatted too... don't tell me it's just torrents doing it because when the PC had restarted windows brought up an error report stating there were a number of reason what could of caused it:

 

 

Hard disk drive error detectedThank you for submitting an error report.Problem descriptionWindows was temporarily unable to read your hard disk drive. This problem is general in nature and unfortunately we are unable to determine the specific cause of the read error from the error report. In most cases this problem is temporary and can be ignored; however, if the problem is occurring repeatedly we recommend you follow the additional troubleshooting steps in this article.Common causes of this problem include:   * Large file transfers from secondary media to local hard drive   * Power loss to hard disk drive causing inconsistent data sectors   * Problems entering Hibernation or Standby Mode   * Hard drive lag caused by filter drivers, such as virus scanners   * Bad connection cables, or misconfigured master/slave settings

 

 

I ran chkdsk and got no errors, I thought maybe it was random, re-installed utorrent and as soon as you oepn it, it locks up and blue screens... I ran disk defragment and it gets to about 60% and blue screens again?

 

Does it sound like I have a bad HD? Is it when I get to a certain point on it that it blue screens and restarts because of a bad sector? I'm not totally clued up on HDs, its not my area so any help you could give would be much appreciated

 

P.S. I don't wanna hear "haha you used a torrent program bla ble" because I have since I had the PC, it doesn't sound like that is doing it, the HD seems to hate large file transfers or prolonged testing.

Edited April 15, 2006 by BroDan

[Cran.]

It sounds like the data on the disk is corrupt, so maybe reformat it and see what happends. If you get the same errors, it's going to be hardware related and your Hard Drive could be dying, who knows? Maybe something wrong with the cables?

[Sixdust]

 

* Power loss to hard disk drive

 

 

Have you checked to see if it is the power supply that maybe causing the problem? It seems that when you do things that make the hard drive sweat (defragment) and all, it may be taking more power than needed, or one of the connecting cables is loose. This happened to me last year to my secondary drive which was a westernal digital 80gb drive. The only way it would work is if I stuck my hand in the case like a moron, constantly moving the cable around until the harddrive showed up in my computer. I ended up trying many adapters and fixes, none which worked, so I cut off the end and put on a new one. Worked like a charm, even though I dont think of it as a smartchoice, to rewire a 300w power supply with ordinaty scissors and electric tape.

 

Have you tried booting with just the master drive? See if it works then.

 

It also may be utorrent. I never have used it (azerus and bitcomet user) but are you sure that it is not causing the problems?

 

Also, did you happen to do a virusscan or spyware scan by any chance? It hardly seems like the problem but its always is good to know that it isn't a virus from your downloads plauging your pc.

[BroDan]

The problem happened before I re-formatted and that was with azureus... it seems that I downloaded a corrupt file, the HD didn't liek it and blue screened.

 

Has happened since I re-formatted again, i don't think it's my power supply, I have deleted the corrupt files and I managed to de-frag without it freezing at all.

 

The only problem now is firefox doesn't remember some of my settings when I close it, mainly the "use small icons" option.

 

I am gonna try it without the other HD and do some stuff and just see what happens.