Computer Freezing up and Restarting

[m3trj]

OK I've had this problem for a while now, ever since I got a Seagate 120GB SATA HD.

Every now and then, about once a week, the computer will randomly freeze up. What usually happens is the hard drive LED lights up, and about 3 seconds later the computer stops responding. Everything on the screen looks fine, it's just completely frozen and I have to restart.

Except recently it has begun restarting whenever I compile something in Visual Studio 2003. Just a minute ago, the computer restarted and hung for a few seconds on the POST, and I heard the hard drive spin up after about 10 seconds. This makes me think that the hard drive is failing. Is it safe to assume that the hard drive is causing the restarts, and is it failing? Or could it be something unrelated, like a power issue? The fact that it only started when I got the hard drive makes me think that is the cause.

Appreciate any help.

Thanks.

 

[Juice Daddy]

if it's an option, try a different hard drive for a while...

 

[m3trj]

Yes thanks for the reply. I am just doing that now, since I have two drives.

I also ran the Seagate diagnostic tool on the drive and it passed the SMART test, so there doesn't seem to be a hardware problem that the computer can detect. It failed the partition checks though, but that is to be expected from all the restarts.