B
Bill Butler
I have been having a problem with intermittent reboots which seem to
be based on disk access of a particular location on a disk. The disk
is a WC2500JB (I think - it's the parallel version). I do a lot of
video compression - recording movies on my replayTV, downloading them
to the PC and compressing them with divx. I might run for days at a
time with CPU and disk access pegged. I usually run two compression
jobs at once, since I have a hyperthreading chip and I seem to get
some efficiency from running two as opposed to one. I gradually
started seeing more and more system resets at seemingly random times,
but then I realized that it would occur consistently upon access to a
particular file, or even a particular place within a file. I got the
windlg utility from WD and discovered the disk didn't pass the basic
test. This was after probably a couple of months of CPU time spread
over about 6 months. Since it was in warranty, I got a replacement
(very easy process!), and everything seemed good. I did the both the
fast and extensive disk checks a few times after installation, and it
passed each time. I didn't do a check for a month or two, but then
last week got another reboot event. Now it fails the quick test, and
the extensive test causes a reboot. Also, if I use the windows scanner
and select 'detect and attempt to recover bad sectors', it reboots
after scanning for a while. I have tried the more recent version of
WD's disk diagnostics, but it doesn't seem to run on my system - won't
even start up.
Am I just hitting the disk too hard? Is there anything to be done
short of sending in for another replacement? Thanks!
Bill
PS: System - XP pro, 3.06GHz pentium, ASUS P4PE motherboard
be based on disk access of a particular location on a disk. The disk
is a WC2500JB (I think - it's the parallel version). I do a lot of
video compression - recording movies on my replayTV, downloading them
to the PC and compressing them with divx. I might run for days at a
time with CPU and disk access pegged. I usually run two compression
jobs at once, since I have a hyperthreading chip and I seem to get
some efficiency from running two as opposed to one. I gradually
started seeing more and more system resets at seemingly random times,
but then I realized that it would occur consistently upon access to a
particular file, or even a particular place within a file. I got the
windlg utility from WD and discovered the disk didn't pass the basic
test. This was after probably a couple of months of CPU time spread
over about 6 months. Since it was in warranty, I got a replacement
(very easy process!), and everything seemed good. I did the both the
fast and extensive disk checks a few times after installation, and it
passed each time. I didn't do a check for a month or two, but then
last week got another reboot event. Now it fails the quick test, and
the extensive test causes a reboot. Also, if I use the windows scanner
and select 'detect and attempt to recover bad sectors', it reboots
after scanning for a while. I have tried the more recent version of
WD's disk diagnostics, but it doesn't seem to run on my system - won't
even start up.
Am I just hitting the disk too hard? Is there anything to be done
short of sending in for another replacement? Thanks!
Bill
PS: System - XP pro, 3.06GHz pentium, ASUS P4PE motherboard