Hard drive cable not sure if it needs replacing

Summerbear5 · 21 Jul 2013

DocBrown said:

Also as mentioned above, the computer PSU. How old is it ? What brand is it ? How many watts is it rated for ?

How do I find this information?

DocBrown · 21 Jul 2013

There should be a label or sticker on the Power Supply Unit (PSU). It may be on a side that is not visible easily, unless with the computer OFF, & unplugged from the wall AC power. You remove the 4 screws that normally secure the PSU in its location, slide it slowly out of position & inspect all the sides for a sticker or label.

Summerbear5 · 22 Jul 2013

bobafetthotmail said:

Summerbear5 said:

Bob please tell me how to do what you suggested. Thank you.

Download DiskCheckup, and run it (no installation required) select your hard drive and go in the tab called SMART info, scroll down and read the raw value field of "UltraDMA CRC error count".

The error count was at 11 yesterday, had another episode today and the error count is still 11...

bobafetthotmail · 23 Jul 2013

Then it is not the sata cable. Do what Docbrown said so we can identify the PSU.

Summerbear5 · 23 Jul 2013

For the PSU this is all I could find.

It's from Delta Electronics 350w Switching Power Supply. I didn't find a year but I bought the computer in 2005 and it's the original one that came with the computer.

madcratebuilder · 23 Jul 2013

Summerbear5 said:

For the PSU this is all I could find.

It's from Delta Electronics 350w Switching Power Supply. I didn't find a year but I bought the computer in 2005 and it's the original one that came with the computer.

You may want to upgrade the PSU. Your GPU has a rating of "Maximum Graphics Card Power 29 Watts" and the recommended minimum PSU is 300 watts. Additional HHD and optical drives, fans, etc may be stressing your 350 watt PSU.

My 2005 vintage XP machine has a 450 watt PSU. I thought that was pretty powerful then, today 850 watt or more is almost standard. PSU's are inexpensive today, this CoolMaster 500w unit is under $40 and has great reviews.

I think someone already said to check all your rail voltages in BIOS.

Summerbear5 · 23 Jul 2013

Sorry but I confused how my problem can be related to the power supply as for I've been running this same setup for years and never had a problem until I blew the computer out with canned air. If it was truly stressful to the power supply how come it didn't act up sooner? How can I be sure it's just not the motherboard going out?

Not trying to question anyone's diagnoses but I'm curious how it could be the power supply.

And how do I check my voltages in BIOS...

bobafetthotmail · 23 Jul 2013

to check the voltages you need to reboot, and then press the key that the text on screen tells you to press to enter Setup, or BIOS, or System Configuration or whatever. They are all different. Be fast (or reboot with the finger ready)
In general it is usually F1, F2, Del. This article has more details.

Then you travel with the arrow keys until you get into a page about hardware temperatures and fan speeds, where there is also the voltages.

As I said all BIOS interfaces are different, so I cannot give more precise instructions.

Check the 12V and the 5V values, and report.

Not trying to question anyone's diagnoses but I'm curious how it could be the power supply.

That's a fair question. The PSU is the only component in the rig that turns power from the wall socket into something not dangerous. Being the most stressful job, it fails much much more frequently than a mobo.

Really, a non-overclocking mobo can fail only if a capacitor on it fails (bulges or leaks its internal fluids, easily detectable by visual inspection), due to human-caused static charge discharges on its components (this article) or due to physical damage, and that is a far rarer occurrence than a PSU failure.

But yeah, that said, we have no way to know 100% that it's the PSU.

Another test for PSU issues is running the PC with less stuff attached as possible, that is detach USB stuff (leave keyboard and mouse) and secondary hard drives and CD drives. This decreases the PSU load, and should make the PC more stable. If this happens, the PSU is the culprit.

Anyway, take out the PSU (outside the house) and give it again a good cleaning with the pressurized air can. Some blob of dust that wasn't cleaned could be shorting stuff.

Also check underside the mobo (between it and the mounting panel), and clean there as well.

Summerbear5 · 23 Jul 2013

Thank you Bob,
I appreciate your knowledge and explaining this to me. As I said I wasn't trying to question anyone but you can't learn unless you ask questions and I was just wondering about the relation from one to the other. etc.

For the entering BIOS...as my computer starts up it's F10 to enter setup but there is nothing in there that refers to temperatures and fan speeds or voltages. And F2 takes me to boot menu.

bobafetthotmail · 23 Jul 2013

meh, should have expected it for a HP rig. You sure you moved through all the pages/tabs and scrolled to the end of each?

Try what I suggested above, disconnecting non-critical devices/drives and running for a while. That eases the load on the PSU and could stop it from acting up. Then we would have some proofs.

Other than that the only other way is getting a hardware PSU tester, or trying a bunch of programs that should theoretically tell you the voltage. Point is, you need to find one that reads the voltages correctly and it's again trial and error. A 12 Volt reading cannot be lower than 9 volts nor higher than 14 volts with your PC still working at all. (and similar for the 5 Volt reading) If it's outside this range, the program is wrong.

A list of programs that you can try: HWmonitor , HWInfo (click on the "sensors" button to get a window with the voltages and temps), and Speedfan.

Download the first two tools as zip file. They will run without installation. Speedfan needs installation.