Sporadic HD problem...PSU?

[R. J. Salvi]

Worked on a machine in which the Seagate 250GB SATA HD would sporadically
slow waaaay down either at boot, and/or during usage. Event Viewer showed a
"bad block." Removed the drive from the machine, installed it as a slave on
another machine and ran virus/antispyware scan as well as Windows (XP) and
Western Digital disk diagnostics (full scan and repair options). A/V
software detected/disinfected a trojan and both diagnostic utilities gave
the drive a clean bill of health (including SMART). Put the drive back in
original machine and it ran fine for a couple of days, then problem
resurfaced.

Thinking the drive may be slowly self-destructing, I replaced it with a
Seagate 320GB SATA drive and reinstalled OS and apps from scratch. No
problems until I powered down the PC and powered it back up about an hour
later. Slooooow boot and access times. I tried attaching the drive's SATA
cable to another port (SATA 0 to SATA 1, 2, or 3) with no change.

The machine is an HP d4100y P4D (3.2GHz) machine with a Lite-On 400W PSU.
Mobo is P5L-PE (945PE chipset), 2 GB (4x512) DDR2-4200, DVD burner, MSI-6600
vid card, Hauppauge 500MCE dual-tuner TV card, SB Audigy 2 ZE sound card,
Seagate HD and 56K modem.

The machine ran fine for well over a year before the problem arose. My
intuition tells me the following are possible suspects:

a.) PSU
b.) motherboard (south bridge?)
c.) a Windows update?

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated. TIA.

 

[Arno Wagner]

Worked on a machine in which the Seagate 250GB SATA HD would sporadically
slow waaaay down either at boot, and/or during usage. Event Viewer showed a
"bad block." Removed the drive from the machine, installed it as a slave on
another machine and ran virus/antispyware scan as well as Windows (XP) and
Western Digital disk diagnostics (full scan and repair options). A/V
software detected/disinfected a trojan and both diagnostic utilities gave
the drive a clean bill of health (including SMART).

Don't trust a simeple SMART: good/bad. You need to look at the
attributes in detail. Thresholds for "bad" are notoriously
over-optimistic.

Put the drive back in
original machine and it ran fine for a couple of days, then problem
resurfaced.

Thinking the drive may be slowly self-destructing, I replaced it with a
Seagate 320GB SATA drive and reinstalled OS and apps from scratch. No
problems until I powered down the PC and powered it back up about an hour
later. Slooooow boot and access times. I tried attaching the drive's SATA
cable to another port (SATA 0 to SATA 1, 2, or 3) with no change.

Ok, that is somewhat conclusive.

The machine is an HP d4100y P4D (3.2GHz) machine with a Lite-On 400W PSU.
Mobo is P5L-PE (945PE chipset), 2 GB (4x512) DDR2-4200, DVD burner, MSI-6600
vid card, Hauppauge 500MCE dual-tuner TV card, SB Audigy 2 ZE sound card,
Seagate HD and 56K modem.

The machine ran fine for well over a year before the problem arose. My
intuition tells me the following are possible suspects:

a.) PSU
b.) motherboard (south bridge?)
c.) a Windows update?

b.) and c.) cannot cause bad sectors. If you problem is indeed
bad sectors (the SMART attributes will tell), then the PSU
is the likely candidate. Or you have two defective disks,
which can happen when both were mishandeled, e.g..

Arno