My unusual situation

[zmanzero]

i have read these forums for months, perhaps you folks can help me.

i purchased an imac 24" al back in august. 320 hd. in about 4 months my hd failed. it was replaced, i believe it was replaced by this -
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=305&language=en

i was on tiger, those are the discs i have to restore. the apple store, when it replaced my hd installed leopard. here are my questions, perhaps you can help me...

was my original disc failure due to me running folding at home, a distributed computing program? i recall my hd temps exceeding 60c at times running the program.

another question. in leopard i have boot camp built in. i have purchased xp home sp2, the single disc. here is my quandary. i want to dual boot into xp but the leopard instructions say to insert the install disc to load the windows drivers. i have no leopard install discs, only tiger. is there a way to surmount this?

i have other questions concerning this os, it has been a while since i was on an apple, but this is my first thread and i thought i would try for 2 birds with one stone. anyway, thanks for any info in advance.

 

[GSMiller]

I think it's possible for a program to crash your hard drive. I was having problems with Firefox on my HP notebook, and when I followed Mozilla's directions to fix the problem and restarted, my hard drive failed. Although the fact that the hard drives HP uses totally suck didn't help either.

If the installer still works (can't say that it will, as Boot Camp support for Tiger expired in December) you can download Boot Camp 1.4b here and create a disc from it with all the drivers on it.

 

[zmanzero]

thank you gsmiller. i have the concern that the disc burned will not be recognized in this leopard os, but what the heck, as i described in the title of this thread, these are unusual circumstances. thank you again.

 

[tefleming]

F@H could definitely increase temps which could shorten the life if your HDD. Installing Leopard was probably just an oversight on the technician's part.

It should work/be recognized.

 

[taylorwilsdon]

I always tell people to to ABSOLUTELY DO NOT run folding at home/seti/anything of that sort on their personal computer. It might be a nice thing in theory, but it destroys computer hardware by putting strain on the components 24x7 when it normally would not be and greatly shortens hardware life. I don't think manufactures should honor warranties for products abused by folding. People using servers or dedicated folding machines are great - thats who is helping the cause. Your single machine is nothing in the scheme of things and you are destroying your hardware. There are people running entire server farms dedicated entirely to folding (check hardocp) that can pick up the slack for you.

 

[tefleming]

I always tell people to to ABSOLUTELY DO NOT run folding at home/seti/anything of that sort on their personal computer. It might be a nice thing in theory, but it destroys computer hardware by putting strain on the components 24x7 when it normally would not be and greatly shortens hardware life. I don't think manufactures should honor warranties for products abused by folding. People using servers or dedicated folding machines are great - thats who is helping the cause. Your single machine is nothing in the scheme of things and you are destroying your hardware. There are people running entire server farms dedicated entirely to folding (check hardocp) that can pick up the slack for you.

I don't know if I go THAT far.

If you're running any retail PC, I'd skip F@H - they are not designed to run 100% 24-7. On the other hand, if you built it and are monitoring the temps, fold away.

Folding with a well ventilated case should not cause a hard drive to die more quickly (the intervening factor is the heat thrown off by your CPU).