Hard drive problem

[mport9491]

Hey guys.

2 years ago, I built my own computer, and for this specific computer, I purchased a 300gb SATA Western Digital hard drive for it. Everything was fine until now.

Recently when I download from torrents, I get the CRC error. Don't really know much about it but after researching in some forums, it can be said that either the hard drive or my memory is the problem.

I tried defragmenting my hard disk, cleaned the drive, even reformatted and yet sometimes my computer freezes and reacts slowly. I'm not sure how to explain this part but on my CPU, there's this two lights. One light that indicates whether your CPU is on, and the light beside it indicates that your computer is 'loading/reading', basically the second light is the one that occasionally blinks. Sometimes when I use the computer, this 'blinking light' suddenly just wont stop blinking until the light freezes and at the same time, this is where my computer hangs up and after 5 or more minutes, it would be back to normal.

I ran CHKDSK the other day and after 3 hours, the operation was stuck at 75%. What do I do? Is my hard drive dying? Should I buy a new one? I need your opinion guys. Thanks!

 

[Hawkeye22]

Download HDTune or speedfan and check the SMART status of the drive. You can also download memtest86 and test your memory.

 

[mport9491]

Thank you for the suggestion. Will try it ASAP.

 

[mport9491]

I just downloaded it and there seems to be a problem.

And yeah, how do I check for the SMART status? I'm not really familiar with these things.

Here's the link of the image in case the one above doesn't load.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/204/capturechr.png/

 

[Hawkeye22]

That's not good. I'd keep an eye on the current pending sector count and make sure to make a backup of that drive soon.

Count of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently read successfully, this value is decreased and the sector is not remapped. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector (since it might be readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and remaps it the next time it's written.

You can find SMART parameter info here and you can google for more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.