Question HD Giving cyclic redundancy check

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Wags317

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 26, 2001
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Quick questions, I have a Maxtor 80GB HD(primary drive) that’s about 3-4 years old and a few months ago I was copying a DVD images from this HD to my external HD when I got a BSOD. When I rebooted, my XP install was hosed and I had to reload everything. After that I ran the Maxtor tools on the drive and wrote zeros to it and everything checked out so I reloaded windows and it seemed to work fine. Which brings me to yesterday, I just got done downloading some torrents. When I tried to un-RAR a 5 GB file I got a bunch of “cyclic redundancy check" from windows. Then my computer started acting flaky, so I decided to due a reboot. After the post when Windows was starting, I got a bunch of errors saying certain files where missing from the "system32" directory. So long story short, I swapped HD loaded up windows and connect this Maxtor 80 GB as a slave. Now I can read most of the data on this drive except there is a lot of data missing from "system32", Program files (this directory is completely empty where there should be a lot of directories and files), and windows directories. Now to my question, from the story I just told would you say that this HD is on its last leg for sure? Or could there be another issue?
 
Well if the drive checks out OK, I'd look to the memory and the PSU as the next culprits. Run memtest for a couple hours and if the memory is fine, but the system flakes out with the current replacement drive at least you'll know the drive is good That would leave the PSU and besides checking voltages in software or with a meter, which may still look OK but could be the problem, you'll have to swap it out.
 
Before I went to bed last night I ran memtest86 all night, and when I got up this morning it had passed 20 runs with zero errors. How could the PSU cause this problem? And if so why wouldn't my slave drive be messed up as well, because I'm using the same power lead?
 
How could the PSU cause this problem? And if so why wouldn't my slave drive be messed up as well, because I'm using the same power lead?
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I've seen weak/dying PSU's that aren't capable of providing the proper power cause all kinds of problems. Specifically why, I suppose the answer would be improper power distorting data signals during transfers causing corruption. Just one of some possibilities. If you've used your current drive long enough to believe it is stable and completely functioning, then chances are the possibly problematic drive is bad and/or could use a reformat. Since it isn't running the OS at the moment, it won't affect system stability nearly as much, if at all.
 
Due you know of any tests you can due to check out your PSU. Keeping in mind I don't have a or ever used a voltmeter.
 
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