Ongoing problems w/ SATA HD's

[b16]

well for xmas i built a comp.
stats:
abit kd7
AMD xp 2700+
1 gig ram
1 80GB Maxtor SATA
1 160GB Maxtor SATA

only had 1 sata cable for some reason so i only used 1 HD at a time. started w/ the 80GB and that one took a dump on me after only a few weeks of play time. would not let me reformat..gave me BSOD. so i installed XP pro on the 160GB. ran fine for awhile and then problems started to occur. it seemed like ever 3 weeks or so i'd have to reformat. after doing this about 3-4 times i got fed up. last time i reformated i got Norton 03, adware, spybot, router/firewall and SP2. worked fine for the same amount of time but now it will not let me reformat. if i try to load in normal it will go to the XP load screen w/ the blue scroll bar and restart as soon as the first bar hits the right side. all safe modes and "last good config" mode doesn't work either. i try to do the "repair console" and it crashes. i try to reformat and as soon as it scans for 15XXXX it gives me BSOD. so..is my HD done? is this common w/ maxtor? possibly bad batch of HD's?

hopefully someone can help me. sucks when you spend the money thinking you buy quality stuff but it ends up screwing you.

 

[Liquidlen]

I doubt very much if 2new HDD's are bad. Maxtor's are very reliable. and you would have warranty even if these are no good.
Are you hearing bad noises from the drives?
The fact that you got to the beginning of the windows boot screens tells me that you have a driver/Harware conflict somewhere.
Are there any error messages when you get the BSOD what are the file names mentioned?
What exactly are the problems you stated getting?
You state the you keep having to reformat ,but I believe you may be jumping the gun ,if you were able to load and run Windows ,the drive must have been operating O.K.a reformat is way too extreme in order to troubleshoot problems.
Is your power supply rated for SATA drives?

 

[b16]

well i gave the hd to a friend. he did some raid thing. he got the hd to quick reformat..not format. when he tried to full format it would stop at 87%..he tried it 3 times. it was a file allocation error. so he said he could get it to work again..but who knows for how long.

 

[Samstoned]

some spyware and or trojans write to drive with script that make the section of drive clusters look bad to OS and some utilitys
have your friend download 0 wipe or zapit
if you now have a stable system running you can
open a command window this will put you in C:\
type A: should put you in the a or floopy drive
very importan to know C:\ should be 0 and D:\ should be 1
now type A:\zapit
it will prompt you what drive you want to set to all zeros if your OS is on 0 drive select 1 the bigger the drive the longer it takes 120 gig about 2 hours
this is LLF should give you back any (bad) clusters
if you can't run OS boot floppy with this installed
set your machine to boot from floppy on bootup