Can power problems cause a HDD to fail?

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

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I didn't realise until today that my psu was only 200w (Shuttle SK43G)

When repairing HDD's at times i may have up to 4 HDD's connected (2 of which are sata), as well as a dvd drive and fx card.

One of my sata occasionally makes a clunking sound, i have not heard it for about 2 days though - i currently have 2 satas, 1 ata and just the Fx5900 running off the psu.

What i really want to know, is whether a lack of power could be causing the HDD to fail or is my drive just slowly dying?

Cheers
 
Lack of power could cause a hard drive to fail I suppose but it would generally cause all to switch off at the same time or more likely the computer to crash. If the hard drive is making a clunking sound it is more likely that the drive is gradually dying and has nothing to do with power or lack of it. Have you checked the rails on your PSU to see how they are fairing? If the computer is stable then I'd guess it will be just the hard drive itself rather than a PSU problem. :)
 
sWiZzLe said:
I didn't realise until today that my psu was only 200w (Shuttle SK43G)

When repairing HDD's at times i may have up to 4 HDD's connected (2 of which are sata), as well as a dvd drive and fx card.

One of my sata occasionally makes a clunking sound, i have not heard it for about 2 days though - i currently have 2 satas, 1 ata and just the Fx5900 running off the psu.

What i really want to know, is whether a lack of power could be causing the HDD to fail or is my drive just slowly dying?

Cheers
Click to expand...

It sounds more like the drive is on it's last leg. :(
 
Clunking sound, unless constantly repeated at once and quite often is not necessarily a sign of death, some hdds make calibration noises that are quite scary but are nothing to worry over, run the manufacturers diagnosis tools to be reasonably sure though.
 
Errrr rails? ....How do i check the rails?

Yesterday i was trying to make a back up of image of a computer, when i returned the 80gb Deskstar which i was trying to back up had turned itself off. Today some of my usb ports seem not to be working. Occasionally i get a message from the Nvidia control panel, saying there is not enough power getting to the card and has to reduce its speed.

The sata seems to fail far more often when my dvd drive is connected :confused:

Yes the computer crashes when i fails, occasionally with a blue screen
 
If it crashes, it might be an underpowered system, 2 SATAs, 1 ATA plus a fairly power hungry FX5900 is not good on a 200w psu, any other pc you can test the drive in? Even using conservative specs, using Xtreme psu calc for a rough estimate puts you in the 240w min range.
 
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Unfortunately my computer is the only one running SATA's but i have had a thought, I will try running a single SATA off the onboard graphics card and see if it still clunks. Cheers
 
For a rough check of the rails (e.g. the power lines from your PSU - 3.3v, 5v and 12v) you can use Speedfan, it isn't always that accurate though and Shuttle may well provide their own program to measure the rails.

If you do discover fluctuations in the rails or have success with a lower load then you could consider upgrading the PSU, I can't recall offhand what other PSUs Shuttle do that would fit into your Shuttle but I think the SilentX (what Shuttle call their PSUs) range of PSUs go up to about 300w so you may have to check compatability in terms of sizes. :)
 
Ran that Xtreme psu calc, got 256, very handy! Can you download it or does only run off the web? So im ordering the SilentX 300

I seem to have disabled my onboard graphics card and can't figure out how to re-enable it lol. Computer crashed with just 1 sata and fx5900 attached giving me a Kernel_Data_Inpage_Error STOP message, i moved the pagefile and computer is now a lot more stable.

I want to buy a hard disk just in case, i've found Maxtor to be reliable in the past, but was wondering if anyone can recommend this one:

Maxtor 6V300F0 DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200RPM SATA II 16MB Cache

I dont have SATAII but I read on this forum that it will work on SATA. Have they stopped selling the original SATA drives now?

Cheers
 
I don't think you can download the PSU calculator unfortunately, it is probably so they can update it more easily.

There have been a few problems with Maxtors and reliability recently although some people get lucky and find the drives great, Seagate and Western Digital are generally pretty reliable.

SATA II is designed to be backwards compatible but you might need to move a jumper to restrict the drive to SATA speeds, since they are backwards compatible then they have stopped producing SATA drives. I'm using a Seagate 7200.10 with a SATA only motherboard and it came with the jumper already in place. :)
 
Yeah ive some post regard this jumper setting, there is no jumper listed in the manual, and i cannot see any spare jumpers positioned close to the connectors on the motherboard. Maybe my jumper s already in place, but being so far away from home, can i risk it :/

I read recently the Seagate has bought Maxtor, wouldn't that Maxtor drives now have Seagate components?
 
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sWiZzLe said:
Yeah ive some post regard this jumper setting, there is no jumper listed in the manual, and i cannot see any spare jumpers positioned close to the connectors on the motherboard. Maybe my jumper s already in place, but being so far away from home, can i risk it :/

I read recently the Seagate has Maxtor, wouldn't that Maxtor drives now have Seagate components?
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The jumper is on the back of the hard drive, as I said on my Seagate it was already in place and I think that is common for most manufacturers or at least they supply jumpers with the hard drive. Instructions should be available on the manufacturers website (or even on top of the label of the drive) if anything needs to be done.

The DM10 series are still based on the design of the drives before Seagate took over I believe so it might not use any parts from Seagate. :)
 
sWiZzLe said:
I didn't realise until today that my psu was only 200w (Shuttle SK43G)

When repairing HDD's at times i may have up to 4 HDD's connected (2 of which are sata), as well as a dvd drive and fx card.

One of my sata occasionally makes a clunking sound, i have not heard it for about 2 days though - i currently have 2 satas, 1 ata and just the Fx5900 running off the psu.

What i really want to know, is whether a lack of power could be causing the HDD to fail or is my drive just slowly dying?

Cheers
Click to expand...
the large amount of power drawn on your power unit should not be the issue in the noise produced by your drive.
I am thinking more of a bad sector or bad block or probs in the the partition table which cause the drive to seek for something or try to fix something and freeze also, at times (mine did to me after I dropped my laptop). Utilities like Spinrite 6 by Steve Gibson www.grc.com rather than chkdsk can not only cure drive errors/problem and reconstruct partition tables but also improve performance and life of hard drives. Run off a floppy or cd at night this tiny little software can work out miracles.
 
sWiZzLe said:
Do i need to back up all the data on the damaged drive before running Spinrite or can i leave it on there?
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You can leave everything there, I run it as well on my PCs. It only repairs/fixes and optimizes, it may move stuff in a different cluster but the files are untouched, on the website there is a video of Steve Gibson demonstrating live on TV his software.
You can use your the command "chkdsk" first and let it run on the drive, if that fixes the problem then it's okay, when you have time you can also move over your stuff to another disc and re-format that drive; Spinrite does a lot more though, it's the ultimate emergency software but not many know about how useful it can be to maintain a drive healthy; by reading on the website I discovered how the hard drive is a bit like a car, it needs to be checked at least monthly if we want to prevent breakdown or failure.
 
General advice is always to back up if you can, it might not damage your system but while you have the chance you are better to take it just in case because as with any program like this you run there is always a risk of data loss. If you aren't particularly bothered about the data then just run it as it is. :)

//edit however since randeesha uses the program themselves they are better placed to advise than me. :)
 
Yeah well i would normally back stuff up i don't have enough space to do so.
Just ordered a Seagate 7200.10 320GB and a SilentX 300W. I think i will wait till they arrive, back the drive up, then run Spinrite.... saying that i may need to use Spinrite to extract the data.
I hope Spinrite is as good as you and the website says, i could really do with a drive to chuck a load of stuff on and lock away - I've got about 50gb of photos ive taken since i've been here, really want to get them off my computer

I know this isn't the correct place to ask but, do you think the 200w SilentX Shuttle PSU would work in a P4 Desktop?
 
sWiZzLe said:
I know this isn't the correct place to ask but, do you think the 200w SilentX Shuttle PSU would work in a P4 Desktop?
Click to expand...

I'm assuming it uses normal connections eg 20pin + maybe a 4pin for the motherboard. If so yes it should work fine although obviously I'd suggest using it in a non-demanding system since it appears that it struggles with the Shuttle system. :)
 
sWiZzLe said:
I've got about 50gb of photos ive taken since i've been here
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wow

[ps: Spinrite does not "extract" data, it moves it around, it optimizes the drive, fixes bad blocks, errors, partition table.. you name it
it does not affect/extract your data, it just does a health check and/or fixes problems.
The website explains everything, just too much to read perhaps but all interesting for someone who wishes to learn or learn more about drives.
 
semi-pro waster said:
I'd suggest using it in a non-demanding system since it appears that it struggles with the Shuttle system. :)
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No it won't, it will just be a workstation for one our centre's

I'll have a look at Spinrite tomorrow evening, I gotta drive to Uganda tomorrow to pick up a volunteer, better get some sleep :o

Cheers, thanks for all you help people, greatly appreciated ;)
 
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