Corrupted Hard Drives...

I currently have 3 hard drives separated into approximately 8 partitions in my computer:

80GB Samsung
80GB Maxtor
250GB Maxtor

All are ATA-133 at 7200(?) RPM.

Since upgrading my motherboard and processor, I've noticed that there are many incidents where files are becoming corrupt. I tried to resolve the issue by completely reformatting all threee drives, but the problem still remains. I am guessing that this is therefore a physical problem with the drives rather than in the software.

When downloading zip/rar files, I generally get CRC Errors. Many programs fail to run due to corruption as well. If I try to playback Quicktime videos, the first 2 seconds of the video play, and then Quicktime crashes due to memory leak. Often, jpg and other images appear corrupt as well. The top section of the image appears fine, but anything below that is a tinted color and off center.

I ran a hard drive utility to check the temperature of my drives. It appears that my two Maxtor drives are running at 30 and 35 degrees celcius, and the Samsung drive is running at 40 degrees celcius on average. The health of the Samsung drive was a reported 54%, while the health of the two Maxtor drives were at 100%. However, I am experiencing corruption no matter which drive I download the files to.

I can see that this could occur if Windows was installed on the Samsung drive, because the files would be corrupted when being downloaded to the temp directory on the Windows drive before being copied to the other drive, but I am unsure of which drive Windows is installed on.

I tried replacing the old IDE ribbons with some new ones that came with my motherboard, but Windows refused to boot and I was forced to switch the ribbons back to the old ones.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can resolve this issue?

 

Have you tried running maxtors diagnostic utilities on the drives?

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...View By Category/Desktop Storage/Maxtor Other

 

Which program should be used to check the health of my ram?

Also, I tried downloading the Maxtor diagnostic utility, and it was corrupt. =/

 

MemTest.

 

File corruptions can also very well be caused by a bad power supply. Swap out your current power supply with one you know is good. It could aslo very well be defective RAM.

Its either RAM
Or your power supply
and worst case senario its your motherboard, but thats unlikely.

Im doubting its your hard drives because if you run diagnostic software it will tell you if your drive is bad or not.

 

I ran the RAM checking utility. No errors were found in the test, and I ran it to 500%.

Unfortunately, I sold my old power supply to a friend when his burned out, but I doubt it would be enough to power my computer anyway. The old power supply was 400W, and my current one is 650W. I am using a Radeon X1900XT video card, along with my 3 hard drives, AMD Athlon X2 4600+, etc. which requires a lot of power. I found that my computer was constantly rebooting with the 400W one, which is why I upgraded to the 650W one.

It would be quite expensive to buy a new power supply, considering I just bought my 650W one a few months ago. I would only want to do this as a last resort. Other than that, I don't really have access to a powerful power supply for testing.

 

Could be that when your "Old" power supply was acting up it cooked the MB's capacitors, check MB for swollen cap's. Also check the HD connectors.
Good Luck feel your pain been there done that, and will not wear that D**n T-Shirt.