hard drive problem

i'm using WinXP.

after having some trouble earlier with my hard drive, I got a new hard drive of the same make and model (Western Digital WD1600JB) and I'm actually using both at the moment. The old one that gave me trouble is being used as a slave for media storage the new one is being use for Windows.

Well anyway, a couple of times earlier this morning while not in front of the computer, I heard an odd familiar sound - the sound of a hard drive shutting off. I have also heard it a couple of times in close succession.

It also has happened twice while I was in front of the computer. The whole system seems to lock up SOLID for a minute or two when it happens.

So I'm wondering, is this a problem with the old (possibly faulty?) hard drive, or a possible fault with the new one? Or is my power supply (~350W) possibly too weak? Or could this be caused by bad formatting... ? Any other ideas... ?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Sir VG

If you have a bad drive connected, even if it's not the primary, Windows is gonna go bonkers eventually.

Just backup your files and get that drive out of there.

I'd like to save it if possible. Would a low-level format help?

And does this tell you anything as far as suggesting maybe bad formatting?

Originally Posted by rendr

Could it be that your computer is set to put your hard drive to sleep after a certain amount of time? This happened to a buddy of mine a while back.

Sometimes there are settings in the BIOS to turn this on/off, or take a look in Power Options under the control panel.

I have Power Options set to "never" turn off hard drives, and I don't have any such setting in the BIOS.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Sir VG

Your partitioning setup does look a bit unusual to me. Granted I typically don't split my drives anymore (I just format my drives in 1 big NTFS partition) and I'm not use to using PartitionMagic, but the setup just seems...odd on Disk 2. Using an Extended Partition with 2 partitions in it and neither of the two inners being primary or anything just seems a bit off. It should be setup like your Disk 1.

I don't know of a way to correct it without copying the files from Disk 2 to Disk 1 and destroying the Disk 2 partitions and doing it over again.

Thanks. Looks like that's what I'll be doing.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Okay.

So anyway, woke up today and the computer was frozen solid. Restarted and it's been working fine since. (We're talking, like 9 hours here.)

Guess I'll back my stuff up and do a LLF. That should mark the bad sectors so nothing will try to use them later, right? And save the drive, if I'm lucky?

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?