My p4 windows XP system has been killing hard drives
for the last couple months and i can't figure out why.
I've lost a 160 gb western digital, it's replacement from
western digital, a 80 gb primary drive (segate), a 30 gb
primary drive (western digital), and now my latest replacement
primary drive, a new from the box 60 gb maxtor.
Urk.
Oddly, through all this my D drive
(maxtor 80gb) hasn't had a problem once.
Thats not unusual in that situation.
I thought the problem might be the circuit my computer was
plugged into since my speakers pop and the lights dim whenever
the refrigerator kicks in, but before i put in the 60 gb maxtor i
made sure to get off that circuit with an extension cord, verified
my UPS works, and even put a surge protector before the UPS.
Anyone have any ideas what could kill my drives?
Most likely the power supply is dying and thats what is killing the drives.
After the first drive died i made sure to have my computer well ventilated.
What matters is the drive temperatures with the drives dying.
You can check the drive temperatures using something like
SpeedFan. The WD drives wont report their temperatures tho.
My power supply is a 350W max. My system has 3 hard drives,
Do you really need that many ? It
generally better to have less bigger drives.
You may well have the hard drives all jammed up against each other
in the 3.5" bay stack and they can get stinking hot in that situation.
1 ide cdr, 1 scsi dvd player.
Currently I'm suspecting the power supply is failing but
not sure if that would cause the problems I've been having.
Yes, it can certainly do and is pretty cheap to replace to
see if thats the problem. Check the drive temps first tho.
The drives that failed that were my
E drives always had data corruption.
That may just be because they were physically where
they got stinking hot. Thats certainly what you can see
with drives that get stinking hot, data corruption.
The drives that were my primary C drives just wouldn't boot
up, but after a windows install repair they would come up fine.
Most likely still data corruption but of
the win files that are used during a boot.
My current failing C drive seems to only last 1 session,
and as soon as i restart it hangs on bootup, requiring
me to boot from CD and reinstall windows.
Urk. Certainly sounds like the drive may well be getting stinking hot.
Most frustrating to say the least.
True. Fortunately drives are relatively cheap now.
