Can power problems cause a HDD to fail?

sWiZzLe · 2 Jan 2007 at 14:17

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

sWiZzLe · 2 Jan 2007 at 14:35

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

sWiZzLe · 2 Jan 2007 at 14:56

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

sWiZzLe · 4 Jan 2007 at 10:08

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

sWiZzLe · 4 Jan 2007 at 17:28

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?

sWiZzLe · 4 Jan 2007 at 19:46

Do i need to back up all the data on the damaged drive before running Spinrite or can i leave it on there?

sWiZzLe · 4 Jan 2007 at 20:50

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 · 4 Jan 2007 at 21:25

semi-pro waster said:
I'd suggest using it in a non-demanding system since it appears that it struggles with the Shuttle system.

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

Cheers, thanks for all you help people, greatly appreciated

sWiZzLe · 15 Jan 2007 at 11:21

Helloooo,

Back again.... and slightly confused :confused:

For the last week my hdd hasn't made a sound. I did try to use Spinrite without much luck. Yesterday i downloaded a trial of TuneUp Utils 2007 and was very happy to see that they have added a Disk Doctor to their software! <-- anyone know how good this is?

When i did a thorough scan of the drive, although it found errors, i didn't hear a single noise from it :confused:

Oh i also installed the new 300W SilentX psu yesterday and now my monitor has stopped changing colour by itself

Got the Seagate aswell, but havent had a chance to try it

Could the drive have fixed it self or something?