I had 40Gb Western Digital harddisk that worked perfect untill few week ago, the bad sectors appeared with sound some kinda of sound that is comming out of the harddisk.
So i bought another one 80Gb Seagate, i installed WinXP, it was working nicely and Now it got BAD sectors??? i checked with Norton Utilities and the bad sectors are just at the begining of my first partition (i.e. C: )

Now what should i do?? Is it because of my Motherboard (i.e. Intel D845 GEBV2) which i bought 5 months ago or some other problem??

Is it possible to leave the Bad Sectors Area of H/Disk unallocated ??
If Yes, then how to find the location of Bad Sectors??

Should i sell this M/Board with Processor and get another one or continue with M/Board and get a new H/Disk??

... and if you get three dud drives in a row, then you either have extremely bad luck, need to change suppliers or look into some other cause..

Be nice to your hard drive. Be sure your power supply isn't misbehaving. We use Seagate drives in nearly all our repairs, and have only seen one fail early in the past 15 months. However, we also buy refurbished, repaired Seagate drives for various uses, so obviously they can go bad.
Be sure your cleaning lady, or the maid service, isn't impacting the side of the computer while it is on.

this sounds like a power supply issue. The odds of several drives in a row going bad are astronomical. Something is causing them to go bad and I'll bet it's your PSU. Perhaps it is cheap and/or underpowered.

I noted these from motherboard bios
Processor Zone Temperature 45~47* C / 106~114 *F
System Zone 1 Temperature 32 * C / 89 * F
System Zone 2 Temperature 34 * C / 93 * F
Processor Fan Speed 3605 ~ 3641 RPM
+1.5Vin 1.532V
Vccp -1.717 -1.705 V
+3.3Vin 3.293 ~ 3.310 V
+5Vin 5.2631 ~ 5.2636
+12Vin 11.812~11.750 V
do these values look satisfactory ??

How can i check if power supply is going smoothly or not??

IF bad sectors are due to power supply, then how can i control that ?? is there any device that i can use ??

BTW can the PSU regulate the flctuations in the power?? like regulate/restrict to 220V??

I changed the PSU ...... few months ago i changed my old motherboard (Gigabyte 8IDML) because it went dead!!!! the reason i could see was due to PSU b'coz some capacitors were swollen at top!! so i changed the PSU (it has the same output as the old one[the sticker on PSU] except...former was Made in China and this one Made in Taiwan) with motherboard.

Apart from the slightly high temps on the CPU and the +12V dipping slightly (still within safe specs) they look alright.. suggestions: clean out the dust from your system with a compressed air source and while you're at it check the sticker on your PSU and post it here.

Use my games faq to help you check if your PSU is adequate. Link in signature. Down in Part two of the faq.

Yep. A new PSU that meets/exceeds your pc's requirements. Or if you think its electrical related but not your PSU then see if you get power disruptions in your area.

Depends on your PSU. Generaly most PSUs offer fault protection (over/under/spike power) from the mains side, but if you want a power conditioner a UPS or similar device is needed. The mains side is set to your country/region's electricity supply (110V or 240V etc). If you think that your PSU is adequate enough, and you think its due to your electricity grid (if your area has frequent black outs, power spikes etc) then get the aforementioned UPS or power conditioner.

The side you need to worry about is the PC side. The PSU is just a big transformer that takes the (say, here in Oz) 240V and brings it down to 12V, 5V and 3V (as well as a common ground negative). When the PC runs, all of its electronics need energy to run, and it all adds up (motors, chips, etc). Good quality PSUs with the correct Watt for your system can handle this nicely, but generic or cheap stuff won't, and tend to die and bring the rest of your system with it.

More in-depth explanation can be read in my guide.

so.. did you change the PSU or the motherboard or both?

PSU stciker i will post ASAP!!

Power line disruptions a lotttt in area, black out, power spikes..!!!

UPS!! wht kind of ups will work fine for me.

both, PSU & motherboard.

I think you will need a good UPS like one from APC. Check out this page for more details.

Did i mention that i also hear some creepy sound from both h/disks. ... i think when it reaches the bad sector area of h/disk for read/write the sound comes..... otherwise no sound except when it is placed on its sides or upside down.

Thank you Rick. Your comment on power supplies could probably be repeated 100 times a week on this forum. Too few on this list understand how a power supply works or doesn't work.

That being said, it would be better to have a UPS rather than let your PC be exposed to the effects of power surges, innit?

If this could be a software problem you might be able to check the hard drive with a live cd of knoppix, Kanotix Linux, or some other Live cd. I'm sure they have a hardware check of some sorts to see if you really have this as a software problem. If you have problems with a live cd (that runs off of your cdrom and not your hard drive) then the problem may be a memory problem because linux needs good memory to work properly

the new psu

in case u couldn't read from sticker
SENSTRON
========
Model: AP2-5300F-RV2S
A/C Input: 115/230V 60/50Hz 7/3.5A
FUSE Rating: 6A/250V
DC Output: 300W
+5V 16-30A +12V 10A +3.3V 7-28A
-5V 1A -12V 1A +5VSB 850mA
+5V ANd +3.3V Total Max:175W

Caution:
========
Ser No: T9190096m1A

P/N: 6AP2-300B046

the old one that i replaced

Woah the +12V rail on the new PSU is seriously underpowered. 10A?!!

what should i do?? should i change it? if yes then what to look for?
Do everything else look fine on new PSU?