I recently installed a 200gb Seagate as my slave. I copied some files over, overall taking 100gb space. Shortly after (hours) it crashed, and it has a habbit of it now. Sometimes my PC dies randomly (freezes) but mostly when i click the HDD it does.

My friends say it could be my Power supply unit not giving enough power.
This is some info that might be usefull:


120GB maxtor Primary HDD (ata)
200gb seagate Slave HDD (ata)

Casecom Power supplu 115/230v. not very good....

1 DVD drive.

I took out my extra neon lights and DVD drive to see if it would improve, it seems ok so far. But no doubt will crash soon ....

My PC has some spyware and **** on it, that is why i copied my files to a slave, i will virus scan all on the slave then format 120gb. Cant do that now though incase the 200gb packs in!

help please!

Hi Juno,
Welcome to PCHF.

Try downloading the tools from this page http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/
You can run the online test or download the desktop one (the middle one) and run the tests on your drive, this should tell you if the problem is with your drive or not.
Let us know how you get on

Hey!, i tried what you asked and got seemingly unpleasent results.


Run: 06/02/2006 20:02:46

NVIDIA nForce2 ATA Controller (v2.6) : WDC WD1200JB-32EVA0
Model: WDC WD1200JB-32EVA0
Serial Number: WD-WMALC1068484
Capacity: 120.03 GB
Test result: Self-test routine completed with a S.M.A.R.T. alert error!

The Drive Self-Test has determined that the drive may have one or more failing sectors. Please run SeaTools Desktop for additional information about this problem.
NVIDIA nForce2 ATA Controller (v2.6) : ST3200822A
Model: ST3200822A
Serial Number: 4LJ2Q1CY 4LJ2Q1CY
Capacity: 200.05 GB
Test result: Self-test routine completed without error.

Any drive reporting a S.M.A.R.T. error should be considered likely to fail at any time. You should back up your data from any such drive as soon as possible. Contact your computer or hard drive vendor to obtain return information.


I know it says to post this in a .txt file in rules ... but it is really short ...


My 120 has an error, but is not seagate? so ... mh?

My 200 is ok!. The 200 has not crashed since i took out some power consuming fans too ^^. But not to say it wont soon ...

Hi again Juno,
Thanks for posting those results, you can get a Western Digital Diagnostics from here just to check the drive and be sure it's ok (if not BACKUP YOUR DATA REGULARLY!) http://support.wdc.com/download/inde...n&pid=3&swid=3

Apart from that, you mention that your PSU is "115/230v" Ideally we need to get an idea of the "wattage" or capacity of your power supply ( It should be somewhere on the PSU. e.g. 250W. Depending on what the rest of your system specs are i.e. CPU, Motherboard, fans etc you might find that the PSU is not strong enough to handle the load and need to upgrade it.
You can work out your power requirements if you look at this page and follow the instructions
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
Let us know how you get on
:computer2

Hey again , I have not experienced a single problem since i took out some power consuming fans, and lights. My PSU is 300w ( i wasn't thinking on my last reply ...). It's 300w and noisy ... i am guessing 40+ DB :P. The answere is simple then right ? I am gonna look for a nice 10-20 DB PSU ... 400w. The test you linked gave me a result of 278 W usage, however i was unsure on some of the things to check. Brand names mainlu ... i have an AMD athlon 1900+ or something i think ... it was not listed. Either way i think it is the power . Next i will format my 120gb HDD when i find my freaking xp cd .... Is it possible to repair damaged sectors on my 120?. If so how XD?

Thank's for all the help, and speedy replies

Excellent news, let us know how the new psu goes, to try and fix bad sectors (assuming you are on XP) right click on the c: drive, go to "properties", click on the "tools" tab at the top and click on "check now" in the error checking section, make sure both the tick boxes are selected and then click on "start", a word of warning the program will not be able to fix any physical bad sectors, only the logical ones.
All the best and keep us updated:cheesy: