Wow, that's alot of information. Thanks!
I will read through this more when I get home tonight. I will try your suggestion.
The following is the more descriptive list of hardware i have:
1xASUS P4P800 Deluxe Socket 478 Intel 865PE ATX Intel Motherboard (Oced to 3.0ghz)
1xIntel Pentium 4 2.8C Northwood 800MHz FSB Socket 478 Processor Model BX80532PG2800D
4xCORSAIR XMS 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model CMX512-3200C2PT
1x80GB EIDE
1x100GB EIDE
2xWestern Digital Caviar SE WD2500JD 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive
1xeVGA 256-A8-N347-AX Geforce 6800 256MB GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X Video Card (clocked to GT)
1xSound Blaster XtremeMusic
1xPSU Channel Well 450watt max
How would you overclock it then?
While I am not at my home computer, I think currently I have
FSB = 211Mhz
DRAM Frequency = 400mhz
AGP/PCI Frequency = 72.73/36.36
Let me know, thanks!
I have been having hard drives issues. My set-up is the follow
P4 2.8(Oced to 3.0ghz)
1x80GB Hd
1x100GB hd
2x250GB HD
My problems have been with the 2x250GB hard drives. They sometimes boot up with the computer, sometimes dont. And when they do boot up I can't really copy files into the hd. It would get like cylindrical errors and if you format them, do scandisk, there is no bad sectors. What gives? Should I upgrade my power supply?
As you are overclocking from 2800 MHz to 3000 MHz your PCI and/or SATA bus may be overclocked 7% or so.... this will cause CRC32 errors between the IDE Controller (Southbridge, or 3rd party controller) and the interface on the HDD.
I suspect your 250 GB HDDs are of the SATA varient, while the others are of ATA100/133 using a more typical IDE/ATA controller / interface. As
the SATA bus is very susceptible to even the slightest change in clock speed this is likely to cause problems, as you're overclocking.
eg: [IDE Cntr --- port --- cable --- HDD interface --- HDD]
The I/O between these points has a protocol, and if running overclocked the data / instructions to / from the HDD will become corrupted..... thankfully they implement CRC in the protocol to detect 'most' (but not all) forms of corruption.
Cylindrical Errors = CRC failures
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRC32
If you are overclocking be sure to understand all the theory behind the hardware, and what / which clocks, timings, etc is / are actually being changed, and potential impacts thereof. Trial & Error testing is for chumps and does not guarantee 100% stability. (Heck running at stock settings there days doesn't either --- Looks at Asus & MSI 'performace features').
Suggested fix:
Can you overclock and lock the PCI/AGP/PCIe/SATA host bus speeds, while just running the FSB asynchronously ?
Your HDD may also have being put into PIO Mode 4 (usually) by Windows as a 'protection', this will slow performance and CPU load (interupt thrashing of CPUs, not always shown in OS CPU usage) will be extremely high when accessing the affected HDD(s). You may want to force it back to Ultra DMA Mode 5/6 - Serial ATA 1.5 Gbps (various drivers label the modes differently).
For info see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_input/output
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_DMA
Note: If you are using a 3rd party HDD controller (eg: some types of integrated RAID) then it is slightly more complex than above, but still similar that the explaination works.
I still encourage overclocking, but only when all the 'risks' are known and avoided.
Sorry to push Wikipedia so much, but hey.... the info is there.
PS: Any data that has been corrupted already (eg: If you performed a defragmentation recently on the HDDs then potentially the entire contents of the HDD are corrupt.....
potentially), will be difficult / impossible to 'uncorrupt' said data. Thus, you may need to re-install drivers when not overclocking to ensure stability.... You may need to replace each corrupted file as found on a case by case bases --- or in the case of games just re-install and repatch the entire game.
To Test:
For testing I suggest copying a 8 GB WinRAR archive to/from suspected HDDs, possibly back & forth multiple times, to confirm they work, and once copied, reboot (clears the OS cache), then perform a 'Test' operation on the 8 GB archive to confirm it was not 'corrupted in transit' so to speak. When that works you'll know it is very stable. - I've recreated your scenario here many times, and this test will likely 'fail' in your current configuration, try it before clocking back to stock settings just to see what I mean.
Tip: A similar test to the above is awesome for detecting 'slightly dodgy' ports on switches that rarely show up.. you can then flag each 'risky' port and avoid using them at large LAN events.