problem source; Motherboard or hard drive?

[flashyprince]

my desktop is 4 years old ...and has never given me problems until now.

for a long time, i was running my main OS on my main hard drive...
and i had another bigger hard drive for storage. for a total of 2 drives.
this setup lasted for a while..and was basically problem free.

i added another storage drive, for a total of 3..and this was around the time when i ran into various problems. (although it could just be due to the fact that my computer is getting old..i dont know) i would get some random (but somewhat rare) "Beginning dump of physical memory Blue" messages. also, at various times, i get many messages at startup saying i need to run checkdisks processes on either one of my drives. when that happens, im forced to format because these checkdisks messages are too recurrent. after a fresh format..my computer can easily run my 3 drives without any problems... but after a month or so...i need to format yet again. if i dont do that..i get checkdisks messages + a few errors (bad sectors etc.) and my internet browser as well as a few other things become horribly slow. i'll do the sacrifice to run only 2 drives at once...but right now..i wanna know whats at cause here.


what is causing this?

-my main hard drive?
-my motherboard?
-CPU even?

plz help!

 

[MindoverMaster]

Try running Memtest86+

Also, try disconnecting your new hard drive and see if anything improves.

 

[patonb]

I'm betting your os drive is getting old and has bad sectors. The format writes everything to good sectors, but after a bit it writes itself to the bad sectors and craps out.

run a chckdsk on your c drive.