Possible Failing Hard Drive?

[Honda_Boy]

Well recently the drive I had been using as a secondary to keep My Documents on has been acting up. It seems just about every time I opened My Documents (F:\) it would hang for about 20 seconds or more but I could go into other folders without trouble but EVERY TIME I would go to My Documents, even when I just hit the back button from another folder, the computer would hang. Now I have since moved all of my stuff on the F: drive over to my C: drive in fear of a failing drive. I have changed to the My Documents target to this new location and now when I open My Documents, it's fine. Loads immediately every time.

Now the setup is a WD Caviar SE16 SATA300 250GB as the main and a Seagate 16MB Cache SATA300 320GB drive as a secondary and they just run in regular ole plug and play SATA mode. I did the same thing with my old computer for My Documents and never had this prob. It was the same WD 250GB as the main but an older Samsung 8MB Cache ATA133 IDE drive as my secondary. One thing I noticed was on my old rig, the SATA C: would show as a removable drive on the toolbar while on the new rig, neither SATA drives appear as removable (which actually appears more normal I guess). Whether that makes a difference, I don't know.

I've also noticed that my Seagate is considerably louder than my WD but nowhere near as loud as my old computer's original 160GB IDE Maxtor that failed, which is what prompted me to do multi hard drive setups (keep Windows, apps, and games on main, My Documents on secondary, and Anime fansubs on External).

Now is it possible that the Seagate is failing? Or is there some other problem? Thanks for any enlightenment

*Dang while typing this, I tried opening the Secondary Drive from My Computer and the hanging was absent (it's no longer linked as My Documents). Hmmm, now I'm really unsure what's wrong.

Edited July 19, 2008 by Honda_Boy

[TheTerrorist_75]

When was the last time you defragged the secondary drive? Even though it just contains documents and such after a lot of use it should be defragged.

[shanenin]

You could try and run Speedfan. it will display detailed data about the hard drive based on the SMART data it produced.

[Honda_Boy]

SpeedFan says all is okay as did a WD test program. I just formatted it and moved all my stuff to it a few weeks ago. I think what I'm gonna do is just eventually get me a new secondary (or a new main and make the 250GB the secondary) and throw the 320GB in my old PC and get it going again, let my parents use it, and see how long the drive lasts (I gotta good 80GB back up drive for it).

[Pete_C]

SpeedFan says all is okay as did a WD test program. I just formatted it and moved all my stuff to it a few weeks ago. I think what I'm gonna do is just eventually get me a new secondary (or a new main and make the 250GB the secondary) and throw the 320GB in my old PC and get it going again, let my parents use it, and see how long the drive lasts (I gotta good 80GB back up drive for it).

My bet is that there is a specific file , probably one not in a sub folder in the My Documents folder which is responsible (or maybe a shortcut)

Possibly the path or file name gives problems, possibly the attempt to generate previews of a large file ( such as a video) is the cause (IE with my documents on one drive and swap file on another it may have issues moving them back and forth).

Also, there are some folders in My Documents which are created by other applications . While windows may not have an issue with your changing the location of the My Documents folder to another drive, sometimes these other applications do.