Hard Drive Suggestions

[CudofCow]

I have windows XP pro installed on my 120gb Maxtor hard drive. Lately its been acting very funny. I did a complete reinstall of windows and then about a week later the hal.dll was corrupted. I reinstalled over the last installation and it worked fine for about another week. Then it happened again. I just get bluescreens when i start it up.

I have another hard drive, a Seagate 80gb ATA100 running windows xp for now, and im planning on just turning the 120 into spare space but i want to make sure nothing gets damaged. So how do i test the maxtor to make sure its stable enough to keep around?

Also, ive been trying to get Gentoo linux working on an 8gb drive, is switching the IDE cables around from drive to drive a really bad idea or is it ok?

[Wiggo]

Well I wouldn't be swappin' the cable around all the time, if ya don't have enough IDE connections to support all your drives then get a PCI IDE controller card (these are pretty cheap now) and use the boot loader to select which os that ya want to use. Also have ya been to Maxtor's website and downloaded their diagnostic software to check the drive? :?:

[CudofCow]

I downloaded the maxtor software yesterday and gave it a shot. It diddnt seem to find anything wrong with the drive, i think the problem was from swapping the cables back and fourth.. i did this a few times a day and i am pretty sure thats what caused the problems. ::shrug:: oh well.

[maximus7001]

Get new cables if you want to avoid future hastles.