Are heatsinks hard to take out and put in?

[Sondra]

I've been trying to find out why my hard drives nearly all corrupt (except the system drives don't seem to). The latest suggestion is to replace the heatsink, since, when I've monitored the temperature, it's gone as high as 71C. Right now, surfing the web, it's 48C, which surprises me, since it's usually in the low to mid 50s.

I don't mind replacing it to see if it helps, but I don't want to destroy the computer when I do it. Nor do I want to pay somebody to do something I could do myself.

I have an Intel 865 chipset, and the current heatsink has what look like two levers, one near the top and the other near the bottom, and it looks like they're supposed to be pulled in opposite directions. Does that sound right? Will it pull right off, or is it more complicated?

Is putting the new one in hard to do without destroying things?

 

[JBDan]

Don't know why your HD's are going "corrupt." As for HS removal and replacement, its very simple. Just be patient and gentle.
http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle...echnical_reference/99345.htm#upgrading

 

[JEDIYoda]

I am not trying to be rude or make light of your problem but....

What would replacing your heatsink and fan have to do with your harddrive??

Just asking...thx

 

[gotensan01]

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda
I am not trying to be rude or make light of your problem but....

What would replacing your heatsink and fan have to do with your harddrive??

Just asking...thx

I have to second this question. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't see how the CPU overheating could cause everything but extra storage hard drives to become corrupt.

What do you mean by corrupt? What are the characteristics if you try to access a folder/file in these storage hard drives?

Have you tried cleaning out any built up dust on the heatsink/fan of the processor?

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Does the drive by any chance say "IBM Deskstar" on the top?

 

[Fresh Daemon]

Sorry, that's not very helpful.

First, I must agree with my fellow posters. It's very unlikely that high temps are causing hard drive corruption. It used to be that when overclocking meant increasing the PCI bus speed, hard drive corruption could occur, perhaps you read this a while ago and got mixed up?

To replace the heatsink, just turn the arms in opposite directions and lift it out. Before you replace the heatsink, look underneath. On the CPU heatspreader or core, you should see a paste that is at least tacky, preferably wet. If it is dry and powdery (which it probably is), take some isopropyl alcohol and a lint-free cloth (coffee filters work well), clean it all off, buy a tube of Arctic Silver or Ceramique, apply a dot, scrape it thin with a credit card and reapply the heatsink. Arctic Silver takes a few days to settle down but you should see your temps drop noticeably if the old thermal paste was dried out.

Note that you should use a good thermal paste and not cheap Radio Shack crap, it'll probably work as well initially but you'd have the same problem again within a few weeks. It's worth a few dollars for the good stuff.

The stock cooler really isn't that terrible.

How are your case temps? Do you have good airflow? How many fans blowing in and out, what size and what brand are they?

If the heatsink won't come out easily, don't force it. Some idiot at the factory might have glued it on. Take it to someone who's done this before. Rather than pay the Best Buy Idiot - er, geek - Squad, maybe find someone in the IT department of your workplace or school. They're likely to have someone who does this a lot. They probably even have a forum member. If you buy them a beer they'll probably do it for free. I would.

 

[gotensan01]

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
Does the drive by any chance say "IBM Deskstar" on the top?

LOL, yeah not helpful...but funny

 

[eplebnista]

Originally posted by: Fresh Daemon
Does the drive by any chance say "IBM Deathstar" on the top?

Fixed

I have had that problem in the distant past and it turned out to be a bad IDE cable.

 

[Sondra]

Thanks for all the suggestions. On this board, I saw a post about Protonic offering free help on the Internet, so I told them my story about the constant corruption of the drives, and someone there has been giving me suggestions, so I am following his suggestion about replacing the heatsink. He said my temperatures are too high, especially since I once saw it go to 71C, which he said is terrible.

I think my new fan is blowing inward and it should be outward. And I leave the case open since I change drives constantly.

I do have a problem with IDE cables, but that seems as peculiar as the corrupting. I'll put in a new cable and it will be fine for maybe a week or two, and then the drives on it won't be recognized or one of them won't. Often, neither drive will be recognized, all of a sudden, and then, if I take off the slave, the system drive will be fine.

I've replaced so many things, including motherboard, battery and power supply (I've written about most of it here over several months). What I'd love to do is get a new computer--but I'm afraid there's something wrong with my video files and a new computer would not help. Whichever drive I'm using as a system drive seems not to be affected by the corrupting problem, and I don't understand that, either.

The cables become problematic on both the motherboard and an ATA100 card. When I had a computer shop replace the motherboard last year, they took 10 days to get my 4 drives, an internal removable tray and a DVD writer to all work at the same time. I wonder if there's something wrong with the motherboard (Intel D865PERL)--although I got it because the corrupting problems had already started.

I know my hard drives are corrupt when chkdsk says one needs checking and then decimates most of the files--or when, transferring a several GB video file from one drive to another, suddenly Windows says the source drive doesn't exist--or when I try to play a video file and the player says it can't read this is type of file, or I can't open a file or folder. I've been able to reformat drives and then they get corrupted again. I haven't detected viruses.

 

[JEDIYoda]

I think my new fan is blowing inward and it should be outward. And I leave the case open since I change drives constantly.

Most heatsink fans blow inward towards the heatsink !!

Also if you have replaced so many things...maybe you should take it to a shop and have a "professional" look at it....

Also nobody is questioning the validity of whether your harddrives have corrupt files...

What we are questioning is the cause and what you consider to be one of the solutions to your issue!!

I still belive that person at PROTRONIC is wrong to tell you thats your problem...

YES....71c is a might bit high....

But if your having all those problems as you just stated in your last post....

Also you have never listed your sytem specifications.....

brand mobo....memory...vbidcard....h/d brand...etc....

Its hard to help if we don`t know what equipment you are using!!

Good Luck!!

 

[superfly27]

put a 120 mm fan in front of your HDs

 

[0roo0roo]

read some basic guides on diy upgrade

 

[Sondra]

I replaced the last power supply, the small round battery and the latest ram and put in a small fan below the power supply myself. I had a shop put in the motherboard and chipset. And I'm still wary of replacing the heatsink, more now because of dealing with the paste.

The original computer was put together at a shop in September 2001 and has changed a lot including the case. Of the components below, only the video card is original.

Motherboard: Intel D865PERL
Chipset: Intel 865
Ram: Kingston dual 512MB (1GB total)
Power supply: Sparkle FSP550-60PLG
Video card: Matrox G-550

The hard drives I switch among are mostly Maxtor and Western Digital, plus one Seagate 200GB and one Hitachi 250GB that, like many of my other drives, corrupt often. All the drives are formatted NTFS except for one WD 60GB and three WD 100GB that I've had since 2001, that are formatted FAT32 and have not corrupted--but are very seldom used.

The two most recent system drives, a 60GB Maxtor and an 80GB Western Digital, don't seem to have the problems of the other drives, which I put to being used as system drives, but maybe it has something to do with the size. The corrupted drives are 120GB, 160GB, 200GB and 250GB. I used to use 4-5 drives at a time, but the corruption has continued when using even a single source drive plus the system drive.

I never thought the heatsink was the problem, but I'm willing to try pretty much anything that isn't too expensive. (That's not the fan I think should blow outward, it's the new one under the power supply.) The Protonic tech also suggested switching to a SCSI RAID, but it's too expensive an experiment. I'd experiment with buying a new computer before that.

The constant corrupting began in April 2004 after getting a new power supply that I've since replaced twice--and before getting the new motherboard. When the shop owner put in the motherboard, he couldn't get all five drives and the DVD writer (Pioneer 104) to work at the same time. I think that might mean a problem with the drive files--or a problem with the motherboard.

On the other hand, sometimes drives aren't recognized by the BIOS when they should be and I don't think the files could do that. The system drive isn't recognized when it's paired with some other drives. What could cause that?

I have three ideas:

1. Get Spinrite. I've read conflicting things about whether Spinrite "repairs" corrupted drives or keeps working drives from getting corrupted--or is just a lot of trouble that ties up the computer for days or weeks doing whatever it does to a single drive. It does have a 30 day money back guarantee but seems like a huge hassle.

2. Bring my hard drives with my source material to a shop, work on it there to see if the drives fail and, if they do, have the shop owner try to see why--or hopefully finish the project there, if I can.

3. Buy a new computer and hope for the best. Then I'd have to decide what to buy. Fry's has a Celeron with Windows XP Home for $200 today (cheaper than a SCSI drive), but I'd probably need something more powerful.