Paging Error ?
 

I'm running Windows XP Home on my laptop and these paging errors keep showing up in the event viewer.

I'm running an external hard drive. It seems after a few days of being on, I'll hear a "click," then the sound of the drive spinning back up again. What gives here ? There is no page file set for the external drive...yet it's saying paging error. Once the first click happens, it'll happen every few minutes. This is alarming to me because the click sound and this behavior is very similar to hard drives I had in the past that died, although back then I didn't check the event viewer or I was running Win98/98.

Is my hard drive on it's way out or is this an issue with windows ?

Re: Paging Error ?
 

Copy your data to another hard disk as that one is one a fast track to oblivion.

Re: Paging Error ?
 

I think the problem I'm having is an overheating issue, mainly because this is a crappy $30 fanless USB 2.0 enclosure that i'm using. In addition, the drive had been working flawlessly in my desktop for years until I moved it into the external case. My theory of whats happening is that after awhile of being on, the drive gets hot enough to the point where it's having trouble reading and writing data. When that happens, the drive recalibrates itself which is the sound of the drive restarting. When it gets the point of being that hot, it just keeps recalibrating. The click sound that i'm getting isn't as bad as the heads and actuator arms bouncing off the insides of the drive that i've heard from other hard drives, it just sounds more like they are being parked so the drive can restart itself.

I mainly bought the crappy enclosure to bring the data out of my desktop system back with me back home for the holidays, since I had no way to bring my desktop back. I'm only turning on the drive for as long as I need to now, and if I do have to leave it running, I aimed a desk fan at it so it stays cool. Seems to work fine. Dont think there's any damage done to the drive since I've been quick to act when it started recalibrating itself constantly, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Moral of the story, dont buy fanless USB 2.0 enclosures if you want to put a 7200+ RPM drive in it and you actually care about your data. Be prepared to spend $45-$60 on a nice one that has nice airflow characteristics.