Yes, a failing HDD could lead to unstable overclocking.
Yes, a failing HDD could lead to unstable overclocking.
So three days ago my mechanical HDD system stopped working—system froze while browsing the internet, and a hard reboot was the only solution. The drive stayed on but didn’t make any clicking noise. After restarting, a BSOD at startup appeared with an error about winload.exe. This has been happening for the past two days. My system would freeze in a similar way several times when I tried CPU overclocking (it’s an i5 750 on H55M from Gigabyte—oddly it lacks core voltage control, only dynamic Vcore?). Then the same BSOD would show up again. A power switch reboot usually fixed it, but this time it didn’t.
🙁
After two months at 3.2 GHz (which is really surprising given that an OC of 3.6 should be straightforward), it now seems like it’s broken. Sometimes it doesn’t even detect the HDD anymore and displays a SMART command failure. Could this be linked to the overclocking? Or is it just failing completely?
I’ve attached my OC settings, but I’m not an expert.
https://imgur.com/a/w3ls4
EDIT: It suddenly booted again, but I still wonder if someone else has faced similar problems and could advise whether to replace the drive or rethink my overclocking settings.
Yes, I experienced the same issue when first using overckocking and after a short time with Aida64. The system would freeze completely, unable to perform any actions, and the clock stopped. It was running at 3,3 GHz custom settings. After reducing it to 3,2, the problem repeated. Eventually, switching to auto settings resolved it for the past two months. During Aida64 freezing, the system would usually restart to winload.exe and then function normally (at least for the last two months). I also ran chkdsk using a Windows USB installation media.
No crash after 30 minutes of Aida64.
Disk status shows everything is normal with no warnings.
I'm actually writing this on the problematic PC and so far there are no issues. I'll attempt to power it off by pressing the power button, perhaps it just doesn't like it.
EDIT: It's working after several restarts. Still confused about its behavior. How long will it last?
Here’s a revised version of your text:
A brief update on the system's condition.
Recently, things didn’t go as expected.
Last night, I encountered another issue when launching Windows. Initially, everything appeared normal. All applications and Google Chrome started without problems. However, when trying to run other programs, I encountered a System File Error (-1073741819) with almost every .exe file. This error affected programs and games on both hard drives, the system drive, and my personal files. I’m happy to share pictures if needed!
Interesting was that Paint.net or Google Chrome worked fine, as did tools like MSI Afterburner at startup (though running it manually still produced the same error).
In Task Manager, there was no unusual activity—no strange processes—and MalwareBytes was running in the background.
I couldn’t access CrystalDisk to verify the drive health, so I decided to restart. After a moment, when I initialized the system, only a cursor changed between normal and occupied states (a blue circle indicating background work), which coincided with my HDD’s LED light.
I wasn’t patient enough, so I unplugged the drives from their SATA cables and restarted. (It was a bit rough :/).
After connecting just the system drive, it failed to boot completely. At that time, I was convinced it was dead.
Then I connected my file drive, and the issue persisted. The drives were recognized in the BIOS, but when I checked with Parrot OS from USB, the system drive was empty in GParted.
I tried again, and suddenly everything worked perfectly!
I really need more detailed assistance at this point.
🙁
Right now, I’m uncertain whether it’s an HDD failure, overclocking, or something else.