Hot GPU and Serious HDD Lag

So, I've got a 17" dv9308nr and just installed another hard drive into my 2nd drive bay. I took the WD Scorpio 320 GB 5400 RPM out of my WD Passport USB Drive and plugged it into Bay 1 as the default boot drive, and put the HP bundled drive into Bay 2. I recently started noticing that the WD Scorpio gets HOT. 5 minutes after boot up it will be at it's peak and level off, whereas it takes the HP Drive at least an hour to get to the heat level the WD is at.

Problem #1: Ever since installing the WD into Bay 1, I've been having serious Lag issues. The Comp will freeze for a minute with the stupid Orb spinning around and no HDD light on. Maybe a minute later it will play catch up and load everything. This drive is about a month old! I can't imagine a drive already overheating and on the verge of failure. And of course I obviously can't return it since the minute I tore the drive out of the Passport Casing I voided the Warranty.

Problem #2: I downloaded HWmonitor, hoping to see what the temps were. Of course there are no sensors for my HDD, but I did notice something else. My GPU Temp is at about 80 C right now. That can't be right, can it?!? Do GPUs really run that hot or is my laptop on the verge of spontaneously combusting?

Thanks All.

 

Have you run any utilities on the drive to test it?
An overheating drive is usually a result of inadequate cooling, not really because it is on the verge of failure, in my experiences. Inadequate cooling can, however, cause premature drive failure.

 

Well, the thing is it never ran that hot when connected to the USB-SATA Controller Card from the Passport External Hard Drive Enclosure. But for some reason it runs extremely hot when connected to the HP to SATA HDD Connector.

 

I swapped in a 250gb BEVS WD passport Sata drive in my laptop as well and it went up to like 55 degrees C at idle. It was too hot as well. So I swapped it back out.
I don't understand why. I thought Skorpio drives were supposed to be cool. At least it was I believe in my WD Passport drive enclosure.

 

Their is some program/service indexing your drive. If the drive is being indexed, it will become very hot very fast. Use MSCONFIG, to shut off background processes and programs, and that should decrease harddrive activity, and thus decrease harddrive temperatures.

Make sure that your laptop is elevated in the back (stick a book or something non-conductive under the back of your laptop to lift it up off the surface - just do not block the vents with the book) and the fan vents are clenaed to ensure adequate cooling.

K-TRON

 

It turns out part of the problem is that the HP Hard drive caddy that I got for the WD, the SATA to Pin Adapter sticks out slightly from the socket. I switched it out and the WD is significantly cooler now.

 

What do you mean? You reinstalled the WD without using the HP hard drive caddy? and that decreased your hd temps?

K-TRON,
I cleaned the vents and use a clean desk.
I'm looking into MSCONFIG, how do I know which programs/services I need or not? Won't it make my laptop unstable? like some programs I have running are AVG, comodo firewall, NHC, ect.

both the new WD 2500BEVS and my old sata hitachi 80gb were hot (idle at 50 deg C, the wd scorpio was hotter i believe. but the scorpio was fine in it's passport enclosure

 

here is my msconfig startup, which ones should I disable? I just disabled nwiz.exe, anymore?

 

You can also shut off reader_sl, real sched. This tab in MSCONFIG allows you to disable software from booting with the operating system. By preventing the file from loading at the same time as the operating system will not prevent you from using the file. So if you shut off adobe reader in the startup tab, you will still be able to use adobe when windows has loaded.

I also recommend going into the services tab to shut off a few services.
You can send the pics to me in a Personal Message, and I can tell you what to shut off.

K-TRON