Long story short, my Dell Dimension 8400 desktop sometimes hangs and freezes when I access / click on stuff stored in the secondary SATA hard drive connected. Another problem that happens is that upon connecting the secondary SATA hard drive (I connect before turning on the power) and I boot up the PC, I sometimes get this "drive not detected" black screen and WINDOWS does not load. Sometimes only one hard drive out of two cannot be detected.
I don't usually connect the secondary SATA hard drive (and I turn the power off for it when I don't thru' the settings on bootup) and only connect it to transfer or backup files.
I suspect that this may be due to the data cable being old and worn out so it comes loose easily, it is worn out internally so it doesn't transfer data as well, or its connectors are dirty. The reason for this suspicion is because whenever I encounter the aforementioned two problems, the solution I discovered was to unplug and replug the data cables back to the harddrive. It usually works, although sometimes only for a short period (sometimes it works perfectly).
However the solution only solves the symptoms, and may not be solving the cause. So I would like to know what is the cause so that I can replace the parts and remove the cause of this problem.
Now for the long story, my first harddrive (call it HDD-A) used to run rather fast. Even with MSN Messenger, Azureus and a MMORPG running at the same time, it neither lagged the computer or internet connection. This was the case even if it was turned on for long periods of days or a week or two. However, after using HDD-A for about 3 years or so, it started lagging after being turned on for a couple of days. Then it started getting worse and would lag if I opened Azureus. At this point, it could still play mkv videos properly. Sometime around this period, my Norton Internet Security 2004 went nuts (probably a corrupted registry key) and would cause my computer to lag due to it scanning thumbs.db and other stuff every now and then. One of Norton's programs would sometimes "encounter an error" and close itself though Norton Internet Security and Anti-Virus didn't close (but it would rearrange the icons on the bottom right corner of the tab). I suspect that was also due to registry key corruption. After uninstalling Norton and installing some other anti-virus, I stopped having those Norton problems and it became slightly better for a while.
It deteriorated further and it got to the point in which playing an mkv video, especially those around 720p, would make the video lag behind the audio. This was especially the case whenever a particular portion of the video displayed multiple or complex changes in the image. It was also at this point that I started getting a few blue screens (less than five) and started having problems such as the harddrive not being detected, especially if I had just connected and/or disconnected the secondary harddrive.
(HDD-B was once used as a backup HDD such that if HDD-A died, I would be able to access the files in HDD-A using HDD-B.)
However, when I changed the harddrive to a second harddrive (call it HDD-B) with no change to any other part of the desktop, the mkv videos played fine without any lag at all. This led me to initially suspect that it might not be a problem with the components of the desktop but it may be the harddrive causing this problem. However, after using HDD-B for a month or so, it started deteriorating as well and similar problems as HDD-A started appearing, though less severe, even now (after using HDD-B for about 3-4 months).
What made me worry the most was when I was transferring a file from HDD-A to HDD-B. The filename of the Nyoro~n Subs version of Evangelion 1.0 was changed from the original long filename to just _NYORO~1. I did not change the filename (I only noticed it a few days later) but I remember that while the file was being transferred the small little window-tab that appeared displayed the short _NYORO~1 name instead of the full long filename. However, I didn't think much about it at that time as I encountered the same issue with the small window-tab while transferring other files, but those other files did not have their name changed after being transferred (they retained their full long filenames).
So I have four questions.
1. Does anyone know what is the underlying problem with my desktop? Am I right to say that it is a problem with my data cable?
2. Why or how did the filename of the video get changed during the transfer from one HDD to another?
3. Why is there a shortened version of the full long filename displayed for some files when they are transferred but not for others? Is it some kind of hidden system information like the information on the artist in an MP3 file?
4. Is there any way to prevent such a change (or corruption?) in filename?
Thank you.
