hi there,

this is my 1st post so forgive me for being a noob!

i have a 10mb broadband connection, and i frequently max out my connection with speeds of up to 1.2mb/s.

my pc has 2 ide hard disks, one of which is used only for the operating system (windows xp), and the

other for everything else such as storing movies, music, and installing games.  both hard disks are

7200rpm.

there have been times when i have been downloading at the maximum speed of my connection, and i have

also been playing back a movie from my hard disk.  the same hard disk is used for storing downloads and

storing movies, so it is having to do a lot of work, and i notice this, as the video playback of the

movie gets quite jumpy.

when this happens, am i putting a strain on my hard disk and risk damaging it, or is it capable of

storing data at speeds of over 1mb/s and at the same time, reading the data to play back an AVI movie

file.

without sounding obvious, if the hard disk wasn't capable of storing data at over 1mb/s, then i simply

wouldn't achieve those download speeds, and the same can be said for playing back a movie file - it

wouldn't play back (without being jumpy) if the hard disk wasn't capable of reading the data quick

enough.  but can the hard disk do both at once without putting a strain on itself??

thanks for any replies :)