Backup system crashes and hard drive timeout

I had been having strange error messages, followed by a crash dump, while
doing a complete backup.

Checking over my power settings, I noticed I had set an early timeout for
hard drive. I normally don't run in the Performance setting, so I
configured it for backup, setting the hard drive to always be on.

Since I did this, I haven't had any more system crashes.

The strange error messages were "Ready Boost has stopped working," "Host
Process for Windows Services stopped working and was closed," and another
one where a process was stopped. The bottom third of the screen blacked
out. They would follow with a blue screen showing a crash dump in process.
Since the error messages seemed random, I didn't think they were directly
responsible for the crash.

During the time frame for the crashes, I received Vista SP1. Also, I
recently added a 500GB external eSata drive for backups. I still wonder if
I'm right about the hard drive timeout being the cause, because I had the
same hard drive timeout setting when I had a USB external backup drive and
before I got SP1. We'll see.

John