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Not enuf power for Hard Disk?

R

reddybabu

Junior Member
Folks,

I built a AMD 2000XP machine around a Soyo Dragon Plus board.
The machine has an ASUS 6600 AGP card, 20GB Seagate, 40GB Seagate
and 120GB WD, a CD-RW and a DVD Drive.

All this sits in a generic case with a generic 400W PS.

When I added a 120GB Maxtor disk yesterday, the system refused to
start up. When I replace the existing 120GB with the new one, everything
works fine.

Does my PS lack the juice required to support another HD?

BTW a couple of months ago, when I tried to add a USB 2.0 card, the
machine refused to start up. Could it have been the same problem?

Finally I would appreciate any suggestions for a cheap replacement
PS or PS+case combo.

Thanks.
 
400W is relative... if it's cheap generic crap, there's a possibility that it doens't have enough to supply everything (although possible, unlikely)

enermax is a good PS.. look for thier 365W or 415W
 
or the Antec TruePower series....I have the 480W (overkill) but it's pretty quiet and has good reviews....

They also have a "TrueBlue" version that uses LED fans.....if you're into case modding

 
Originally posted by: reddybabu
Folks,

When I added a 120GB Maxtor disk yesterday, the system refused to
start up. When I replace the existing 120GB with the new one, everything
works fine.

BTW a couple of months ago, when I tried to add a USB 2.0 card, the
machine refused to start up. Could it have been the same problem?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

I have an odd scenario with a hdd of mine. It will not boot. No matter how many times I've tried reformatting, and installing a fresh OS, it simply will not boot. I tried using intel's "application accelerator", as suggested by my mobo's website (ECS), and it did something to the HDD, and the HDD may never recover. I even tried using it as a secondary non-boot drive, and it froze my backup system. It is now in my main system as a storage drive, and I have some firmware updates to try, but it's hosed as a boot-drive.

And with the USB card, maybe there was an IRQ conflict, or something odd happening on the PCI bus.

I have an X-pider case from XPcases, and it comes with a 420w PSU that I haven't had any problems with.
 
So, I went and bought a 500w power supply that gave 25A on 3.5V and 12V and 30A on the 5V.
I swap the power supplies, and still the same problem! Boy was I pissed.

Then I noticed that the line that was powering the new hard drive, was also
powering a case fan. It occured to me that may be the case fan was drawing
so much current that there was a voltage drop on this line.

So, I daisy chained the power from another molex that was powering the CD-Rom,
and presto, the system booted up, and is running fine!

Any comments?
 
Yea make sure that the jumpers are set right on the HDD's. One is Master and the other is Slave (if on the same EIDE Chain) I take it you can get into the CMOS and it can find the new 120 gig correct? Is this HDD on EIDE channel or RAID for bootup? I believe your PS has nothing to with this bootup problem.
 
Wow! nevermind about my last post then!! Sorry, didn't read your last post all the way thru! Doh! Wierd, about the Case fan!
My suggestion is find a lower current case fan and replace it! Nice detective work!!
 
Anyone know what could cause that? Surely it couldn't be a current issue, I just can't imagine a fan drawing so much current that you couldn't power an HDD on the same line.
 
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