Return of my problems pt.2 and disk boot failure

[supaidaaman]

This is the continuation of an older thread where i never figured out the problem, but i thought i had fixed it.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=27&threadid=1984149

Problem:
The computer will randomly slow to a crawl, apps wont load, i am unable to end processes or shutdown.

For a few weeks now i had not installed a raid onto my computer, i was currently using a WD 150 raptor. I had no problems, it was my 6th fresh windows install with minimum parts and drivers. I figured the problem had gone, so i installed all my programs and games...then i thought "hey ill try out my raid again, because its going to be time to video edit soon."

When the problem has happened:
-Firefox
-CD installation crash
-Real Player and Firefox
-Sandra test
-After effects loading
-one time i checked "my computer" and it happened
-random times

Its the 3rd day since my raid install and i got my first slowdown sluggish OS crawl of death. I was listening to some music with firefox open, and BAM! it happens. Quickly i ran speedfan, and sandra to test my voltages and look at temp settings. Everything was fine. For the next 10min my computer was slow and unresponsive but amazingly i was able to run benchmarks in Sandra flawlessly. (very weird) Programs that i closed where gone, but their processes remained, and were unstoppable.

After about 10min the problem seemed to vanish, but i was unable to shutdown, so i reset. Now i am getting a "DISK BOOT FAILURE." (running chkdsk /p as we speak)

What i know is not the problem:
Not sata power
Not sata cables
Not Overclocking
Not memory errors(ran memtest lastnight for 10 hours and 10 tests of test 5)

What i think it might be.
-When i install the NVraid, the problem happens, and when i remove the raid it is still there
-PSU might be bad? but ive changed up the molex/sata cables and the voltages are normal
-I ran my system with SW IDE driver installed with no raid for 3 weeks no problem, but in order to see the raid i had to install the IDE driver again for some reason, (so maybe going over the old driver messed up)
-Could one of the raid drives be bad? Ive run SMART on all the drives already and formatted them all many times, all are perfect according to test software.

Im losing my mind, i just installed over 30gigs of apps and video editing software as well as old video data for editing...plus i just started my new school term. Is there anyway i can image 50gigs off this OS install ( i have it perfect now) so when i do a reformat, i can be set up and ready to go right off?

 

[supaidaaman]

ok, i cannot boot into windows for some reason. The only way i reach the screen is to go into the boot menu F8 seperate of the bios and then it boots from the drive...ugh

 

[Captante]

Regardless of tempetures, you need to lower CPU speed to default 2.2ghz & DDR speed to "by SPD" or auto and see if the problems recur ... it really sounds like somthing is causing corrupt data to be written back to your HD(s) because somthing is being pushed too hard & over time the errors are compounding & corrupting Windows beyond repair.

The other thing it could be is that you need to do a better job preparing your HD's for RAID ... try running a zero-fill utility on all the drives you plan on using in your RAID array before re-installing next time around & see if that helps... RAID 0 in particular can have many problems running on anything other then a clean HD.

 

[supaidaaman]

my computer has been at stock for a few weeks now, i lowered it back after this first occurrence of this. The harddrive thing sounds like something to try.