vervain, interesting post you have there. I have been experiencing a lot of crashes with the large sized Hdds.

Currently using WDD 160Gb and I leave my comp on almost 16 hours a day with no air-con but about 4 fans everywhere. Perhaps my ventilation wasn't done properly.

Anyway, the hard disc failed last nite after my power saver kicked in and I wasn't able to get out of the power saver. I reset the thing and the hard disc started to make ticking noises. I turned it off and only turned it back on after 15 minutes and it started working normally.

Is this a problem or something? My last Maxtor 160Gb (apparently this has a bad rep) crashed spectacularly when it was left on for 72hours straight. Record time crashing.

Why are these large hdd's so sensitive? Is there some sort of special care I should be taking care of?

Can you show a picture of this hdd cooler you have fabricated? I am very worried my WD will fail me soon.

Vervain : I found the problem to my hard disc problem. Interestingly enough it had nothing to do with the hard disc!

I was using an open-casing with a 400watt power supply. It frequently died (as in no power) and I thought I'd finally get it changed yesterday. I bought a 600watt power supply with a big-ass fan in it and did the switcheroo.

To my absolute horror the computer wouldn't startup at all.

Checked the power connections, checked everything replaced everything and finally.. decided to change the 3-socket extension with built in fuse. And what do you know, it worked. My 3-socket extension was the culprit for causing these frequent crashes! Something was wrong with one of the sockets and wasn't providing enough power for a 600watt power supply but working intermittantly for a 400watt one.

How the heck does that work?

Thanks for the tip on the fan. Will try it out a little later today. Any opinions on those heat sinks for hdds?

This post has been edited by lex: Feb 13 2006, 11:51 AM