Hard Drive "Serious Error" on new build

[gary101]

Finished a new build about a month ago:

Core2 Duo 6600 @ 2.4 GHz
Rosewill CPU cooler
Gigabyte ds4 rev 2.0 mobo
Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 (2 X 1 GB @ 1066)
Seagate Barracuda 500 GB SATA (Primary drive)
WD (Caviar? I forget) 250 GB, IDE. Two of these imported from old machine.
BFG 8800 GT OC 512 MB GPU

Temps:

Ambient: 43C
Temp2: 29C (on Speedfan, can't tell what this one is)
SATA Drive: 41C
CPU cores: 18C (all of them)
GPU: 54C (seems to idle about here, up to about 67 at load with stock fan)
IDE HD1: 35C
IDE HD2: 33C

I'm having a fairly major problem. This has only started happening over the last 2 weeks or so. It seems that every night, if I leave the computer on, I wake up to find that "the system has recovered from a serious error." It has also happened during the day once, maybe twice. If I do the error reporting and follow their link, it tells me that it's a problem with a hard drive. I don't know any more than that. I suspect it's one of the IDE drives, but it's just a gut feeling. I don't know how to track down this error to correct it. I defragged and error-checked/corrected all the drives, but it still happens. I think it may have something to do with a conflict between software that updates at night (don't know which) and activity on one of these drives due to a P2P program running. Again, just a gut feeling.

How do I go about tracking down the problem? I don't know how to tell which drive is the problem, nor what the problem could be.

Thank you for any insight and help you can provide.

 

[sturm]

You could try unplugging the non-system drives, if possible, and see if the problem persists. Try turning of hibernation if you have it on. I have seen that cause problems.
Can you copy the error report here for us to see?

 

[gary101]

Thanks for your reply. How do I copy the error report?

 

[rforce]

I suggest you run a full scan on your hard drives using a program like Drive Fitness Test. The great thing about the program is that it is free.

If you are looking for a commercial tool that will test all your hardware, I suggest you check out QuickTech Pro. As a professional data recovery lab, we use this tool on a regular basis to diagnose the condition of hard drives that seem to work intermittently.

At the very least, while you are taking your time trying to diagnose your problems, I strongly encourage you to implement a good backup routine. As much as I like the work, I'd much prefer to hear that you were able to avoid the data loss and the need for my services.

 

[gary101]

I've been through data loss before, and I'm a graduate student, so it was very painful. The problem, as I saw it, was excessive heat in the case; I think it took down 3 or 4 hard disks. My new build is in part done to prevent this excessive heat buildup. The two IDE drives came from that old system, so it's possible that they're still suffering from the effects of all that heat.

I'll try the Drive Fitness Test and see what it says.

Thanks for your input!

 

[rdb]

+1 "Sturm" Had this before, unplugged the 2nd drive and problem solved. Replaced 2nd HD and problem never returned.

 

[wheelthrown]

diasble hybernation... move everything from extra drive to boot drive and reformate 2nd older drive to same format as boot drive... also disable the pagefile on second drive as it's prolly slower...