If I can add a bit to JT's reply...

If you are overclocking your memory you risk getting more errors than the
guys who built the memory planned on. If the memory is not ECC memory then
you may get more single bit errors which will cause your machine to stop
when they occur. ECC memory can correct single bit errors but non-ECC memory
can only detect them and when that happens windows will blue screen. Most
home PCs have non-ECC memory because it's cheaper.

Overclocking could also cause the occasional double bit error which non-ECC
memory cannot detect. This would be bad. As JT indicates, this could cause
all sorts of mayhem. If you're lucky, windows could execute a broken
instruction or reference a memory address in outer space and then blue
screen. If you are unlucky it could blunder on using bad data and do
something nasty to your file system (or it could harmlessly stick an umlaut
onto the screen somewhere.) Hard to predict.

cp




"Mark M" wrote in message
...
I use a partition copier which boots off a floppy disk before any
other OS is launched.

If I copy a partition from one hard drive to another, then is there
any risk of data corruption if the BIOS has been changed to
aggressively speed up the memory settings?

For example the BIOS might set the memory to CAS=2 rather than
CAS=3. Or other memory timing intervals might also be set to be
shorter than is normal.

I am thinking that maybe the IDE cable and drive controllers handle
data fairly independently of the memory on the motherboard. So
maybe data just flows up and down the IDE cable and maybe the
motherboard is not involved except for sync pulses.

There are three scenarios I am thinking about:

(1) Copying a partition from one hard drive on one IDE cable to
another hard drive on a different IDE cable.

(2) Copying a partition from one hard drive to another which is on
the same IDE cable.

(3) Copying one partition to another on the same hard drive.

How much effect would "over-set" memory have on these situations?

Do the answers to any of the above three scenarios change if the
copying of large amounts of data files is done from within WinXP?
Personally, I would guess that it is more likely that motherboard
memory comes into play if Windows is involved.