I built a new computer, and my 320 gb WesternDigital hd used to work fine... but recently i've been having trouble with it. When I boot up my computer, the hard drive works just fine, but after some time, the hard drive just fails and becomes like unusable. If I have something like downloading to the drive, it displays it as an I/O error, and I get a window prompt stating like "Windows was unable to save all the data for the file F:\$Mft" But.. I don't really understand the error, cause I can still browse through the hd...really..really...slowly. Also, if I reboot my computer, then the hd works fine until it I/O errors again... but the data is fine. Help please?

this could be caused by bad ram. download and run memtest to check out the RAM. www.memtest86.com

check your IDE data cable as well.. and also run a disc diagnostic utility from the WD's website..

Sounds like a write error. Everyone thinks it memory when the I/O Error is displayed. Input/Output. I say run Hiern Boot CD Tools if you want to run Memory test. There is one for Windows but it actually runs in NTFS Dos. Very quick and tells you right away if memory is at fault here.

Still HDD does go bad and DOA is more than it was years ago with new HDD. If you just got this drive take it back if it's new or send it in to WD, they'll check it out for you and if it's bad it will be replace for free.

Thanks a lot guys! I'll get right on it. :3