Bad HardDrive?

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JohnnyR~

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Every once and a while a get a problem with my computer where it totally locks up; and not just simply a program not responding -- like the whole system crashes, and the computer will stay this way until you manually restart it from the case power button.

I used to think it was just a video problem because it happens more often in video games than anything else, but I soon ruled that out after it would show me that it still locked up in windows desktop too.

I thought it was a heat or dust problem, I cleaned out dust. I monitored my temperature on just about every device, nothing unusual.

This has been going on now for about 2 years. Its not a frequent problem; but it does like to appear once and a while.

I've changed video cards, and motherboards twice; still no success. Have formatted my HDD several times.

What I've come to the conclusion to is that its got to be a hard drive error/hard drive is dying. I've never replaced this HDD that I've had.. Its an 80GB Western Digital. Its gone through countless formatÂ’s and basic normal wear an tear over the years.

Is it possible its a HDD issue, or am I still overlooking something?
 
have you tried a clean install of xp? that could solve a lot of your problems that you may be having. its always worth a shot.
 
you could try running these tests(there free) in this order, and c if you find the cause...

-memtest86+

-Prime95

-Western Digital Datalife gaurd diagnostics.
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www.memtest.org

downlaod the 'compile for bootable floppy' and just extract it to a floppy and boot with it. prss escape to stop test and reboot. It tests your ram for errors. it runs forever unless you stop it, the more passess you let it make the more acurate prolly. but u might wont to let it go for at lease 1:30hrs to make about 3 passes at lease.

http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm (Prime95)

just download the program for windows and run its torture test. it 100% loads the CPU.

WinDLG.exe is on WD's website. its extended test will prolly find any problems
 
Yeah run the Data Lifeguard diagnostics. Between my one of my friends , my brother, and myself we once had about 5 Western digital drives total about 350 Mb that didn't work and were no older than 2 years old. WD sucks!
 
if it was the hard drive, it would have competely died by now (2 years is exceptionally long for a bad hard drive to be running)

I suspect the power supply. bad, fluctuating power supplies can cause corrupt files, random reboots, freezing, and possibly even damage to your hardware
 
Yeah run the Data Lifeguard diagnostics. Between my one of my friends , my brother, and myself we once had about 5 Western digital drives total about 350 Mb that didn't work and were no older than 2 years old. WD sucks!

i wouldnt blame it all on the brand, many of those problems could be related to user compitence?, bought refurb?, ect.

iv had WesternDigital and a Maxtor, running continiousely for about 3yrs now in this old pc of mine. and never had a prob with either... Doesnt mean there both good, or bad though. means thyv been runing within operating tollerance, and have worked as thy were designed to.
 
I too have a maxtor drive that has been runing for a couple of years, but I also have this little WD 4Gb drive from a long freakin time ago, and as much as I hate to admit it that little SOB just keeps runing, it's more reliable than any of the others were.
 
I had the same problem too. Just only 2 days ago. I found that with my problem it was Windows XP that was at fault. Windows XP had changed my IDE controllers transfer mode from UDMA 5 – Ultra 100 to PIO. After I changed it back everything was fine but then Windows did it again. It apparently changed back to PIO mode due to Windows logging that I had supposedly experienced 6 read errors with my hard drive. So I then ran a utility that I got from my hard drive manufacturers website that scans my hard drive for anything wrong and it came up negative. There was nothing wrong with it at all. So I eventually decided just to run all my hard drives on my RAID controller and haven’t had any problems since. In fact I’ve actually experienced a large speed increase.

IÂ’m not sure if this will be any help to you but anyways good luck.
 
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