Constant Crashes/Hangs - But is it my board (790i) or HDD (Raptor) thats the problem?

Constant Crashes/Hangs - But is it my board (790i) or HDD (Raptor) thats the problem?

Recently my PC has been crashing and freezing (well hanging on stuff for a bit) a hell of a lot .. At first I thought it was my CPU OC, but P95 didn't kill it, so I bumped the vCore a tad just to be safe. This didn't help really so I thought, might be my Vista install, its starting to age - so I defragged, scanned and all that and in the end re-installed. No luck there ...

Even @ stock speeds I still get crashes and freezing .. So what's the cause?

Now, I suspect my HDD is the cause because when it does lock up and I reboot, my machine hangs when it's detecting my SATA devices - it see's my DVD Drive but then can't see my HDD. Unplugging the HDD and letting it post before plugging it back in fixes this however .. Also, its a Raptor (150GB) and not long I read on Tom's Hardware that Raptors and Vista 64bit Ultimate (for some reason) don't like each other and they investigated this showing how their Raptor was the cause for constant 'random' crashes ..

But then again .. I've got a 790i board .. Hailed for causing numerous problems (ie. data corruption), so maybe its my board ..

I get paid on the 25th so that's when I'll be replacing what ever is causing the problem, however I'm not sure which component is the problem .. I don't have any spare HDDs to test with (all of mine are in use in my server) and I don't have any spare 775 boards ..

So what do you guys think? Cheeers

If anything I would blame the board then Hd.

Are you running hard drive in ahci mode?

No the Raptor isn't in AHCI mode .. I made a small advance in stability .. I unplugged my iPhone (lol) but it only helps stave off a crash for a short period .. At the moment it keeps crashing and saying disk boot error blah blah on which I then load up my Vista disc to repair the install. However it doesn't detect any problems and then just boots fine ..

Did you check the application and system event logs to see if there was any info. I assume Vista has them like XP does.

Yeh each time I get a crash or hang no errors show up in the logs .. I've swapped out my Raptor with an 80GB Seagate drive, now instead of like instant freezes it sits there with Vista's hourglass for 20mins doing nothing .. I've given up to with it really seeing as I don't have other parts to swap out n test, I'm pretty sure it's my mobo but it doesn't matter - at the end of the month I'm rebuilding with a E8600