Hard drive failure?

[sesstreets]

Hey guys, I bought the Pangolin about two years ago and I run win xp on it. Its a pretty stable desktop replacement but two things have been starting to cause problems.

There are obvious corruption problems on the hard drive, I can't open certain files and opening the files that are not seemingly corrupted can slow down the pc to a crawl.

I think this can be fixed by simply replacing the hard drive for the IFL91 model that I have. Which means purchasing a SATA150 drive and dropping it in there, but I question if I can use the newer SATA3.0gbps drives and lowering it down?

I faintly remember replacing a desktops hard drive with one of the newer drives and having to set a jumper to lower the speed, do laptop drives have this as well?

Secondly, once in a blue moon, the computer will completely shut off. Now I'm no moron, at times when this happens the computer is ridiculously hot and I'm using many apps all at the same time. Do you think it would be wise to invest in one of those laptop bases with the fans?

Thanks for any replies in advance.

[thomasaaron]

For that model, I believe you have to use SATA2.

Remove the bottom panels and see if any dust-bunnies have set up house in your computer. Blow out the cpu fan (and the rest of the motherboard) with canned/compressed air. Sounds' like you're overheating.