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Dalton
I seem to have Sata hard drives going on me all the time but not the IDE drives and I was thinking is it all possible that it could be the Sata port causing this? Can an Sata port damage a hard drive?
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Dalton
I actually had this PSU tested and it was all good and it was wit the second last HDD that went and the last one that went was with a different PSU. I found a little while ago that only 2 of my outlets has full ground, 1 other has little and the other one has none. I never thought about it before but I was using the Sata drives on the secondary port all the time and found out about left and right angle Sata cables and got a left cause my video card was blocking the primary port. Would having the hard drive on a secondary port cause any problems?
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Dalton
One was a Seagate 250gb and the last one was a Western Digital 250gb. They we're both used drives and maybe they could have been worn out and just a coincidence they both went or maybe it was to do with the outlets not providing proper ground or any at all? Must say I am confused and worried because I plan on getting a brand new 500gb HDD soon and I wouldn't want that one to mess up. So what would be the signs of a bad port?
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Dalton
Ok I think I will go for it and hope for the best. Thanks for the help!
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Dalton
Same to you to!
captaincranky
Posts: 20,144 +9,151
Dalton, are you in an area that has issues with power outages, power spikes, and the like?
If so, your PSU could check good, but still be part of the issue, if it doesn't have auto voltage adjust.
Improper grounds can cause voltage fluctuation in certain circumstances.
Consider, repairing your grounds, having a working surge suppressor, and battery battery backup to plug your machine into.
Is electrical supply the reason your HDDs failed? I don't even want to guess, but making the repairs and additions I suggested, will go a long way to quelling your anxiety.
If so, your PSU could check good, but still be part of the issue, if it doesn't have auto voltage adjust.
Improper grounds can cause voltage fluctuation in certain circumstances.
Consider, repairing your grounds, having a working surge suppressor, and battery battery backup to plug your machine into.
Is electrical supply the reason your HDDs failed? I don't even want to guess, but making the repairs and additions I suggested, will go a long way to quelling your anxiety.
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Dalton
Think I made a mistake on above post but actually one of my outlets has no ground at all and one has little ground and the other 2 have ground and I just found this out recently and now I have my computer only on the grounded outlets. With the last HDD that went, it was on the non grounded outlet and later moved to one that was and I had crashes because of that so wondering if that caused future problems. The second last one that went I was on an outlet with very little ground and I was flicking the PSU power switch on and off cause I heard something going on it the tower which was a power connector hitting the side fan and so maybe that did something to that one. I have a dual core @ 2.7GHz, 4gb ram, 9800GT card, 80 gb and 20gb HDD and a DVD drive and wondering, is a 450W PSU enough for all that? Just curious if I have enough power to rule that out. Sorry for the long post but so much I want to say about the issue.
misor
Posts: 1,430 +328
There are many online psu calculators.
try this: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
try this: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
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Dalton
I think I did everything proper but it says recommended PSU wattage 409w. So that will be ok or how accurate is the calculator?
misor
Posts: 1,430 +328
The normal thing is to have an allowance of about 20% of the recommended wattage and to use a true-rated psu.
for the psu and general computer builds, try reading some info from techspot's buying guide:
https://www.techspot.com/guides/buying/
for the psu and general computer builds, try reading some info from techspot's buying guide:
https://www.techspot.com/guides/buying/
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Dalton
Ok so basically I should have a higher watt PSU, like maybe a 500w or more? On that link on the budget pc which was more like mine which has integrated graphics it said a 400 for power and I have a 9800GT and I am getting a 500gb HDD so maybe I should look into getting a 500w or greater? I just want to be on the safe side and not ruin hardware.
misor
Posts: 1,430 +328
Based on your calculated psu wattage requirements, you should be fine using a reputable brand psu 450 to 550w.
if the price of a branded psu with different wattage is similar, then the better choice is the higher wattage.
and of course it is illogical to buy/use a more expensive psu if you don't need the higher wattage or does not plan to upgrade your other pc parts in the near future.
I have used a generic 500w psu which is running fine for more than 5 years but another computer's generic 500w psu was replaced several times already in one year.
that failure rate made me buy thermaltake psus.
if the price of a branded psu with different wattage is similar, then the better choice is the higher wattage.
and of course it is illogical to buy/use a more expensive psu if you don't need the higher wattage or does not plan to upgrade your other pc parts in the near future.
I have used a generic 500w psu which is running fine for more than 5 years but another computer's generic 500w psu was replaced several times already in one year.
that failure rate made me buy thermaltake psus.
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Dalton
Actually I think this PSU is more than 5 years old as well and the brand name is XG Vigor and I don't know how good a name that is. Some of the molex connectors are kinda loose now and I think the fan on the other case would cut out cause of that so maybe it's best to get a new one but other than that I played lots of games with it with no issues but If a system is under powered I guess it would be quite noticeable like crashes and reboots all the time? Maybe on rare occasion I get a crash here and there but I imagine most computers do once in a while.
I recently had the same problem. I could connect a new SATA HD to a Dell motherboard and withing a few minutes I would start experiencing I/o errors and then the hard drive dies. Will not mount. I first thought it may be a power supply and tested it with my PS tester and it checks out OK. The only other thought is it might be mis-writing to the drive; corrupting it. I noted this MB works ok with drives plugged into the USB. I am considering plugging in a PCI SATA card and trying again. I am using LinuxMint 19. I being doing this since the early days of Linux and this is a first for me.
MaikuTech
Posts: 1,128 +190
What you need to do is get your hands on another computer, plug in the same sata cables with your new hard drive.
Put your hand on top of the hard drive, and make sure you can feel it and hear it powering up.
If the needle on the platters is not moving at all, verify in bios that is working or not.
Dead hdd/ssds will not show up in bios or the bios will flat out tell you it can't read it.
The dell mobo is having an irq problem, if its out of warranty you may as well buy a new mobo or build one.
Its not that hard to figure out if you know which signs to look for.
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