something is wrong with my drive lately. it all started one day when i got this message while booting my pc. "drive 1 on primary eide controller is operating outside of normal specifications". now i dont see this message anymore but when i write new files to that drive, they become corrupt.

i am using windows xp pro sp1 and its a wd 180 gig hdd.

Check in your BIOS for the settings of that drive. It should have LBA enabled.
Also, your BIOS might not be able to handle such a big drive (might go over the 1024 sector boundary), look for a BIOS-update from the motherboards manufacturer that may deal with this problem.

Download this hard drive diagnostics tool to check your hard drive ...

http://support.wdc.com/download/windlg/windlg10.exe

Your hard drive may be failing, and that tool should allow you find out if this is the case.

nic i dl'ed that tool and it says pass

Please give us the make and exact model of your harddisk, its jumper-settings (master or slave or cable-select), as well as all the entries you find in your BIOS for that disk.

Also, check all hard drive cables (remove/refit).

realblackstuff, model is WDC WD1800JB, its on cable select and ill check what the bios has to say.

nic, i already did that.

this is what the bios says

primary drive 1 .... hard drive

drive type ... auto
capacity ... 180 gb

realblackstuff, to answer your question. ive had this drive for over a year and it worked without any problems so its not the bios not being able to handle it. so instead of auto, it should be LBA?

You say drive 1 is giving the problems, do you have a drive 0 attached to the same cable ?

yes shiney, i have 2 drives attached to the same cable