Topic: Losing power to harddrive?

[Hiatus]

I'm not sure what the problem is with my desktop, but I keep losing power to one of my harddrives. It only recently started after I installed a new game and was playing for awhile. I could hear the harddrive wind down, the game would freeze and the hd light on the front would go crazy, after about 2-3 seconds it would start back up again and everything worked.

The problem is starting outside of the game now, and when the hd spins down windows freezes... I'm backing up all my stuff right now and was going to re-format... unless its not a software problem? I'm thinking it might be the psu as its only a 350w and I have a higher-end graphics card and soundcard. I'm also running quite a few fans (5 i think?).

The only reason why I think its software related is because after windows has been running for awhile the hd light on the front basically stays lit up, meaning something is reading/writing to the harddrive constantly, right?

Also, just to clarify, the harddrive that spins down is (I believe) the slave and not the master.

EDIT: On second thought, I was just listening to the sounds the hds make when they turn off and I'm thinking it might actually be the master.

I'm not sure whether its the hd or the psu or something else?

[Sandra]

Have you got S.M.A.R.T. enabled in your bios as it may be a symptom of the drive begiining to fail 

[Hiatus]

I couldn't find anything about s.m.a.r.t in the bios settings, but you think the harddrive is done for? its only about 2 years old... although it has been through some rough times... I was thinking of getting a sata drive, maybe this would be a good time to get one?

[Simon]

Just a thought, but if you think it might be the PSU, would it not be cheaper and easier to try a higher powered one first, or disconnect one of the hard drives to see if the other one then works?

[davy51]

you can try this program: Fresh Diagnose
it will benchmark your system and maybe you can find what the problem is

http://www.freshdevices.com/

[Hiatus]

I think I may have found one of the problems. The black wire on one of my fans had come loose and I believe that it may have been touching the red wire every so often shorting out... it was super hot when I took it out... I think that may have done more than just turn off the harddrive though rite? Wouldn't the psu blow a fuse or something? (if it has fuses?)

Anyways I replaced the fan and everything is ok for now... we'll see what happens in the next week or so.

you can try this program: Fresh Diagnose
it will benchmark your system and maybe you can find what the problem is

http://www.freshdevices.com/

Thanks, I think I'll try that just to be safe.

[Hiatus]

I can't seem to find the edit/modify button anymore, but I also wanted to add that I shut down the MySQL service that I was running as it was trying to write a log to the hardrive every 20 mins or so...

[Simon]

You can only edit a post up to an hour after creating it, Hiatus.

[Hiatus]

Power loss issues are coming up again, only when playing games though (for now). I think I'm going to try upgrading my psu first, I have a 350w rite now and will probably upgrade to a 450 or 500w.

If that doesn't work, I'll replace the harddrive. Once I have enough cash, lol...

I'm trying to decide between two Western Digital drives, both are SATA, but one has an 8MB Buffer and the other a 16MB Buffer. Should I go with the 16 as it's only $14 more? Or will there not be a big difference?

[Sandra]

I am not too sure how much better 16 will be over 8 but bigger is better as they say 

Have a look at the specifications and see what the data transfer difference, if any, is.

If your mobo supports SATA 2 at 300mb then thats a lot better than SATA 1 at 150mb.