Norm Why wrote:
Hi,

A 'lot of diffuse hardware problems' is a story too long to recite. I was
reluctant to upgrade to a BETA BIOS. When I did I thought I'd bricked the
machine. After a nights sleep, I realized the upgrade had reset to defaults
/ PCI monitor rather than PCIe. Now hardware works perfect. However, 500GB
Seagate Barracuda says it has 30% life left. The red light that indicates
drive activity glowed too often.

The SMART table here can allow looking at individual parameters.

http://hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

That means the raw data field in the "Reallocated"
has gone non-zero. At a guess.

Paul