I haven't done a lot of field testing to see if my "red disk issue" is just within this one project or not...trying to figure out why a relatively small project (30 or so tracks with normal EFX, etc.) would be pulling disk load of 70% or greater from my internal HD.  I've tried to eliminate all of my 32-bit plugins...I think a few may have been used on this particular project (had crash issues before with BitBridge...).
 
For comparison, I did a quick backup onto an external drive, opened and worked on the same project, and the load was in the mid-teens to 20%...also seemed to play much quicker, etc.
 
Add in another detail -- I found the blue screen of "crash dump" the other morning (I usually set my computer to sleep after backing things up), tried to run CHKDSK and it got "stuck" on stage 5 - verifying free space.  I had to hard restart it.
 
A couple of questions:
1) Does this sound like a hard drive on the edge of dying?  I find it hard to believe on a less-than-1-year-old Dell XPS (specs below). 
2) Does it makes sense to work on future Sonar projects on an external hard drive exclusively?  My normal protocol is to work within my desktop, then backup and transfer to external once the project is complete.
 
Any help from more "techy" people would be appreciated!  Thanks so much.
 
Sonar X3
Intel Core i7-2600 Quad Core (3.4 GHz, 8MB Cache)
1GB Radeon HD 6450 Graphics
16GB DDR3 1333 RAM
1TB 7,200RPM Hard Drive (2 x 500GB RAID 0)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

> tried to run CHKDSK and it got "stuck" on stage 5 - verifying free space. 
 
When you say "stuck" did it actually get stuck, or was it just taking a lot of time? It's one of those things where you might have to leave the PC on for a day or so.... You were running chkdsk when your PC was booting into windows I would assume? (if not schedule a disk check).
 
I'm not sure who makes your hard drive but often manufacturers have utilities to diagnose issues. Seagate has seatools for instance.
 
Either way please make sure you've done a backup, I recommend Acronis but there are other methods.
 
Hope this helps :)

No...I think it actually got "stuck"...there was no activity on the HDD light, I couldn't hear any internal noise, and the screen didn't even have any exact numbers, just said "    of   stages completed" or something like that.  Right now I'm backing everything up with whatever "Windows Backup" comes standard on the Dell...is Acronis better for audio computers or something?  Thanks Alex.

I take it you have only the one HD? I would add a second one for audio and if you can a third for samples if you use samples. I'm wondering how much free space you have?

Yes John...just the one internal HD (where all of my audio, samples, etc.) reside...also have two Seagate external drives.  Better to get another internal drive rather than utilize externals?
 

> is Acronis better for audio computers or something?  Thanks Alex.
A PC is a PC, what it's used for it doesn't matter :)
 
Acronis Trueimage mirrors your hard drive and is probably one of the best backup solutions out there. Right now it's on a holiday price. Windows backup whilst better than nothing isn't the greatest solution. At least you are taking a backup so hats off to that.
 
Cheers...

caminitic
Yes John...just the one internal HD (where all of my audio, samples, etc.) reside...also have two Seagate external drives.  Better to get another internal drive rather than utilize externals?
 

I think its what works best for you. If the externals are SATA I see no reason not to use them. If they are USB it becomes a bit more complicated. At any rate having all your oranges in one box is not a good way to work with audio if you can avoid that. 

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/
 

Thanks guys...my Seagate drives are actually SSD USB drives...not good???  =-/

If its just that one project, like you said, just raise your Playback I/O buffers to 512 or 1024. This setting will relieve your disk of some of the load. 
 
Your disk may need a defrag with a program other than the windows defrag that comes with your PC. 
Your Disk drive might be getting full.
 
Other than that, you are fine, as its just thta one project and that project just needs more resources than your other projects. No worries