Not enuf power for Hard Disk?

[reddybabu]

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.

 

[eklass]

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

 

[Souka]

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

 

[amdskip]

I would not go with another cheap power supply. A power supply is not somewhere to go cheap, it powers all of your expensive equipment. Check out what AMD has on it's for power supplies that it recommends: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_756_759%5E1039%5E1053,00.html

 

[Bacinator]

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.

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.

 

[reddybabu]

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?

 

[XRaider]

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.

 

[XRaider]

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!!

 

[AtomicDude512]

I always try to run my HDD on it's own line, except for sharing with the rarely used floppy.

 

[Thraxen]

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.