I am putting this post in the storage forum because I have a sneaking (well, more than sneaking) suspicion that it is hard drive related. I just built a new computer, with all new components, except for the hard drives. I have 4 80 Gb HDDs, 2 WD and 2 Hitachi. The 2 WD HDDs are only about 2 or 2 1/2 years old. The Hitachis, however, are probably more like 4 years old. The Hitachis are in a RAID0 and have Windows installed on them. I have been using all of these hard drives in my last computer, but Windows was not installed on the Hitachis so I would not have noticed the problem. After putting together the computer I get system hangs. They all happen while the computer is idle. I have run CHKDSK on my own and Windows has run it on its own a few times. When Windows runs it it says it found free space allocated as part of the volume bitmap, or something like that. When it tries to repair it it says that there is not enough free space and aborts the check (A little caveat, my RAID array has 83 GB free). When I ran it it found quite a few (10-ish) errors and "fixed" them all. I have also gotten a few blue screens, one of which talked about a page fault in a non paged area. Finally, about 2-3 times a day my nVidia drivers pop up a little warning bubble that says there is a critical read error on one of my drives in the RAID array. So, at this point I am almost positive that one of the 2 Hitachi drives is on the brink of death. Really all I am looking for is affirmation that this is a drive and not a software issue that I can resolve. I have tried upgrading the nVidia chipset drivers and had no luck. Also, if we're sure this is the HDD failing, can I make an image and copy it to a new hard drive or will this transfer corrupt files?
have you reinstalled Windowz, cos, Win won't boot an existing Win install from an old PC, what is your OS (XP SP2), although i don't understand RAID but you may be able to reinstall Win by running Code: setup /is this basically disables scandisk during XP install, fro more scandisk options look here BTW: the NVidea popup is not a problem, you just need to upgrade you mobo's chipset drivers i may be wrong, as i don't use Windowz
It might be an idea to download the latest version of 'SpeedFan'. It has a utility within it that will give you a detailed online report as to the 'health status' of your HDD/s. This may proved helpful in determining if they are on the point of failure. Here's the link below: http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
When you reinstalled the OS did you do a quick format? I've had occurances where a quick reformat gave me horrible hangs because of ghost directories.
