My hard drive is failing

[Infinitiguy19]

I know this is a Car/Nissan forum but obviously there are some pretty smart guys on here so. And if I never was on NICO I would ask "Thehotfix.net" but that place turned in to a crap hole to put it nicely.

I have a hard drive that is in the process of failing. I first had it installed in a Netgear SC101 (Network attached Storage) and that went south so I traded it for a 1 GB memory stick. Now I have my data on the hard drive in a windows file system rather than the Netgear file system and the hard drive is powering on and off randomly. Now recently I got a error on Windows stating the drive was in use and "Page" something. so I want to get a new drive and just put the data on that But I want to know if its safe to do so.

I did Check disk and I used Spinrite and no change.The cables are fine and when wiggling the power supply nothing changes at least I don't think so because it restarts frequently.

So any tips would be appreciated.

The SC101 I had my data kept crapping out on me (The file system would go corrupt) so I would have to dump the data onto a spare hard drive then put it back on there. Now I don't know if the hard drive was bad from the start but either way it has'nt been a good experience.

Cliff notes:

Hard drive restarts randomly.wondering if its safe to transfer data to new hard drive.

[szh]

I know this is a Car/Nissan forum but obviously there are some pretty smart guys on here so. And if I never was on NICO I would ask "Thehotfix.net" but that place turned in to a crap hole to put it nicely.

I have a hard drive that is in the process of failing. I first had it installed in a Netgear SC101 (Network attached Storage) and that went south so I traded it for a 1 GB memory stick. Now I have my data on the hard drive in a windows file system rather than the Netgear file system and the hard drive is powering on and off randomly. Now recently I got a error on Windows stating the drive was in use and "Page" something. so I want to get a new drive and just put the data on that But I want to know if its safe to do so.

I did Check disk and I used Spinrite and no change.The cables are fine and when wiggling the power supply nothing changes at least I don't think so because it restarts frequently.

So any tips would be appreciated.

The SC101 I had my data kept crapping out on me (The file system would go corrupt) so I would have to dump the data onto a spare hard drive then put it back on there. Now I don't know if the hard drive was bad from the start but either way it has'nt been a good experience.

Cliff notes:

Hard drive restarts randomly.wondering if its safe to transfer data to new hard drive.

From a safety perspective, there should not be any issue, I would think. The drive failures are most probably hardware or power supply related, not to the files on it.

So, yes, I would back it up in a hurry and copy things over to a new drive (or a USB key) if there are files you want to keep ...

If the drive acts up when in heavy use, then I would copy critical folder/files/directories first, then attempt to copy the whole drive. And, using an external drive (either USB hard drive or a key) may put less of a electrical load on your computer.

I know you mentioned that you looked at the supply ... but ... is your power supply rating sufficient to power all the items in the computer?

Z

[rsagen]

first of all what OS are you running? xp, vista....?

how much RAM do you have?

Basically right click the 'my computer' and select properites, and past that stuff here, maybe I can give you a hand.

[Infinitiguy19]

I am running Windows XP X64 with 1.5 GB of ram. But I am waiting till I get another drive till I can mess with this situation.

I have a ASUS K8V SE Deluxe mother board with a AMD 754 1.60 GHz CPU overclocked to 2.17 GHz and at 100% usage it runs at 95*F MAX. But the drive is 5+ years old so it was bound to happen according to some. but I don't really use the drive so that is kind of strange.

[rsagen]

read this here: http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks5.htm

it explains what a page file is.

my advice is incease it,

Log on to the computer as Administrator.Click Start, and then click Control Panel.Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click System.Click the Advanced tab, and then under Performance, click Settings.Click the Advanced tab, and then under Virtual memory, click Change.In the Drive [Volume Label] list, click a drive other than the one on which Windows is installed (Windows is usually installed on the drive C). Under Total paging file size for all drives, note the value that is displayed next to Recommended.Click Custom size, and then type the recommended value in the Initial size (MB) box. Type the maximum size that you want to allow for paging in the Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.In the Drive [Volume Label] box, click the drive on which Windows is installed (usually the drive C), and then use one of the following steps:If you do not want a paging file on the drive, click No paging file, and then click Set. A message similar to the following message appears:If the pagefile on volume C: has an initial size of less than 126 megabytes, then the system may not be able to create a debugging information file if a STOP error occurs.Continue anyway? Click Yes.

If you want to keep the minimum size of the paging file on the drive, click Custom size, and then type a value that is equal to or greater than the amount of RAM in the computer in the Initial size (MB) box. Type that same value in the Maximum size (MB) box, and then click Set.The following message appears:The changes you have made require you to restart your computer before they can take effect. Click OK, click OK, click OK, and then click Yes when you are prompted to restart the computer. ----------------------------------------------------------

Also it could be possible that when you used the Network Attached Storage, it damaged the harddrive by either Overpowering it/underpowering it, or by being Uncompatable with it, which in turn could be way the Network attached storage failed in the first place.

[Infinitiguy19]

Page file can't be the problem since I have it disabled.

The NAS device makes more sense.

[rsagen]

yeah, and if that is the case I would copy the data off of the harddrive as soon as you can. of course you can still use it (if it still works at all) right up untill the day it fails.

sorry i couldnt help you further dam

[gatzze]

In the Drive C list, click a drive other than the one on which Windows is installed . Under Total paging file size for all drives, Click Custom size, and then type the recommended value in the Initial size (MB) box.

[Infinitiguy19]

In the Drive C list, click a drive other than the one on which Windows is installed . Under Total paging file size for all drives, Click Custom size, and then type the recommended value in the Initial size (MB) box.

What does that have to do with HARDWARE failure?

Thanks for helping.