On Tue, 2007-01-23 at 10:24 -0700, Robin Laing wrote: > > I think with the power supply being low, the drive head will swing back > and forth between park and seek, thus can heat up the drive. Of course > in todays newer drives, heat can be an issue without this. > > > > >> How's that for a design challenge? > > > > Agreed that there are some challenges involved, but it's only a power > > supply. Switch mode power supplies are an old design idea. It > > shouldn't be that hard to make a good one for someone who's fluent with > > them (i.e. the manufacturers who make thousands of them, yearly). How > > many more years of computer systems do we need before we can get one > > with a decent power supply? ;-) There's certainly less complexity in > > them than in the rest of the computer system. > > > > If you demand it, you will get a good power supply. Of course that good > power supply can fail, as it did in my case. The issue for me was that > the warranty required me to ship it a certain way to the USA at my cost > which would have been over 50% of the cost of a new power supply. Thus > the warranty was useless. I will find the bad component myself and > replace it. > > In my case, the +5 rail was about .5 volts low and the drive was > clicking. Change the power supply and all is well. > > I found an online power supply calculator that you put in the number of > drives, fans, processor type and other accessories. It would calculate > the size of power supply needed. In my case, the original supply was > ~50 watts to low. The first new supply had a 100W buffer. > > -- > Robin Laing That's an interesting experience. I reckon I've never had a power supply-hard drive related problem cause I've never run up on a power supply with a bad 5v rail. Maybe I've just been lucky. Although I usually only order either PC Power & Cooling or Forton PSU's. That might be why. In my experience, every time there's been a clicking sound from the drive, it's an indicator that something bad is going to happen in the near future. Diagnostics usually indicate something being wrong with the drive. But with what you've contributed here, I will be watching the 5v rails from here on out. LX -- °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° Off Topic or Political Discussions: http://mandrakeot.mdw1982.com/ http://www.mdw1982.com/mailman/listinfo/mandrakeot "Character is what you do when nobody's looking." - J.C. Watts °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
