GPU Driver Drops

[Fuzzykins]

So... this just happened.
I was staring at my browser window reading a post, and my screen went black. I patiently waited for it to come back up, knowing it was probably a driver issue. That's when I heard it. The awful HDD spin up noise with a buzz added in for extra tomfoolery. In any case, it comes back up saying drivers have crashed.

This wouldn't normally concern me; I'd play it off as a failing hard drive. However, what's bothering me is the fact that... my HDD doesn't have my drivers on it. Are these unrelated issues? Is something going on bigger than what I know?

I checked temps and fan speed immediately, the temp didn't change on the GPU in the slightest, it was at a 35c idle. My fan speed was roughly 42%. My usage fluctuated, with the random spike to 31% when I opened a youtube video. Temps at the time of typing this have dropped roughly 8c. I really don't think it was an overheat issue though.

Extensive Temp Testing

[OhpUldum]

Safe to say you are using the latest video drivers?

[Fuzzykins]

I think one previous to latest, but the problem never manifested it's self before given duplicate situations.

[Milkshake86]

Well the drive has something on it that is needed, it spun up either waking up the system from the driver crash or it does house the drivers.

[Fuzzykins]

Well the drive has something on it that is needed, it spun up either waking up the system from the driver crash or it does house the drivers.

It doesn't. And the system was already woken up. I have a solid state drive which holds all of my drivers for everything. My computer operates fully off of my SSD. I can unplug my HDD and simply lose a few GB of video and music. (Doesn't bother me one bit.)