I have 2 HDD's and SMART fails on one, is it the cause of my problem?

I have two WD drives on my Win7 64Bit PC, 8GB RAM and a gigabyte Mobo.

One drive is the C:\ drive where Windows is stored, it is 120GB and is where I install all my programs. This drive passed SMART and other tests.

The second drive is the D:\ drive with 160GB and fails SMART with close to 1500 errors. This drive holds stuff like pictures and music. Nothing is installed to this drive. This drive passes the other tests as well.

My problem is my computer has a hard time booting. It boots properly every 1/8 tries. Then when it does boot it freezes easily when I open Firefox.

This is a weird problem and from what I can tell since firefox is on the GOOD C:\ drive it shouldn't be affected by the BAD D:\ drive.

Also, when the computer freezes and finally restores itself it forgets some of the changes I make to other programs. So if I booted my pc, opened screen saver settings and changed the time from 15mins to 20mins, applied and closed, then opened firefox and have it freeze after a few minutes of browsing. It would (eventually) reboot and the settings would be back to 15mins.


Help me PC heroes! You are my only hope!

 

I would think the easiest way to see if the drive is causing problems would be to unplug the cables from it for a day and see if the computer still has problems booting and freezing. If the problems persist then it is not the second HD causing the problems.

Which brand are the HDs? Sometimes the manufacturer's diagnostic can attempt repairs. I know Western Digital's does a pretty good job.