Windows 7 HDD damage due to coldness?

I doubt it since those temps aren't really all that cold. You need to check with the mfr to see what temps the drive is certified for. Here's an example I pulled off the WD site for a WD Blue drive:

Temperature (Metric)
Link RemovedOperating-0° C to 60° C
Link RemovedNon-operating-40° C to 70° C

certification and statistics do not help very much. I suppose I will have to get a new drive then - without being certain if the coldness was causing the named problem.

I don't think it is the coldness. These are pretty much what my temps run for the most part.

My experience with HDD goes back into the days of Maxtor drives, when they were still decent. My experiences with them lead me into the wider world of power supply problems due to the drives electronics being susceptible to fluctuations. You may well be experiencing the beginnings of a power supply degrading in performance. A PSU tester is a useful device that can diagnose this. Good luck.

I too will chime in and concur that a temperature drop such as you have detailed is simply not part of the problem.

A question I have is 'how many fans are in your case?'

@dikbozo this is a good thought in my opinion. Even if I have a decent Seasonic psu, there might be some problems after several years of usage. about the amount of fans in my case, I installed a total of five fans (one on CPU, one on PSU, one on GPU, one on front of case, one on back of case). I also remember having had an electrical short a while ago

TRSS said:

@dikbozo this is a good thought in my opinion. Even if I have a decent Seasonic psu, there might be some problems after several years of usage. about the amount of fans in my case, I installed a total of five fans (one on CPU, one on PSU, one on GPU, one on front of case, one on back of case). I also remember having had an electrical short a while ago, I just remember.

Click to expand...

An electrical short can cause serious damage to any and all parts of your system. I would take it apart and test each and every part separately with known good equipment so as to determine if any others were affected. I once stupidly pulled a Soundblaster card out of an operating system which resulted in almost complete failure of all other parts over the next couple of months or so.