PC Freezes then HDD makes clicking sounds.

I will update my specs as soon as I have time to unplug my PC. Also, I don't want to pay too much for a PSU. How about this one?

Devadip said:

I felt like I was cursed lol. I lost 3 disks in 4 years (Kingston, WD and Seagate).

Devadip said:

@AddRam I'm pretty sure I have a load cycle problem. All the HDDs I had were WD Cavillar.

So which is it?

@townsbg My bad. My SSD was a Kingston, but my HDDs were WD. The Seagate one was my old HDD that I kept for 6-7 years (this one was part of my previous system and had never been connected to my Gateway desktop). I mixed them up by mistake.

I'm a bit confused since I lost two HDDs (possibly because of a load cycle problems) BUT I also lost an SSD not long before my first HDD died. It might have been bad luck... I don't know...

Either way, I think I'll be better off replacing my PSU.

Failure of three HDDs forms a pattern. The additional failure of an SSD doesn't necessarily fit into that pattern. It could very well have just been bad luck.

If we were to assume all were related, it would actually narrow things down. HDDs require 12V and 5V, the former for mechanical components and the latter for circuitry. SSDs only make use of 5V (or in some cases 3.3V). Granted, I have no idea what we'd do with that information. 5V is perhaps the least important voltage as far as the motherboard is concerned, but that doesn't mean it's unimportant.

Here are the specs of my current PSU:

Brand: FSP Group INC.
Model: FSP750-80APG
You can see all the specs here.

It doesn't matter what the tech specs are. It is likely correct however I think that it is overloading the hard drives causing the failure. I agree with you on replacing the psu.

I'm not trying to say that replacing the PSU is a bad idea, but I don't think we have enough information to say it's likely the cause. In every case where I've seen voltage tolerances published for desktop HDDs they were even more "liberal" than the ATX spec (+10% vs +5%).

Now that I think about it, I had problems booting my PC at some point in the past. It would not get past the Gateway logo, but after a second time, it would boot correctly.

I realized my external hard drive (a drive I kept connected to the computer, not the HDDs we talked about) had bad sectors and when I got rid of it, the booting problems dissapeared but came back (less frequently) a couple months after. It still happens, but it is intermittent. It can occur once in two months or something like that.

My external hard drive was about 3 years old when I found out it had bad sectors. I forgot to mention I had it hooked up to my PC for a while and then it started malfunctioning. It has probably been damaged when I accidently knock him over a little bit. It's one of those vertical WD external HDDs. I had little to no space on my desk back then and it just flipped on the side when I knocked it over.

Considering this, what do you guys think? A 3 years old external HDD with bad sectors + an intermittent booting problem. Can a bad PSU really affect USB peripherals such as external hard drives?

Moral of the story: Never spend your money on a Gateway/Acer computer lol

Of all the problems an HDD (internal or external) can suffer, bad sectors is the last one I'd attribute to power issues.

You may be able to disable the Gateway logo via BIOS. That would cause normal POST output to be displayed, which may provide some clues as to what goes wrong when it fails to boot. Without further detail it's another symptom strengthening the case for PSU replacement.

In that regard I have just one piece of advice: don't shop with the mindset of finding a replacement PSU for this machine. Shop with the mindset of finding a quality PSU that will last you for years to come. The EVGA model AddRAM mentioned earlier is similarly priced to the Rosewill model you linked, but carries a 10yr parts & labor warranty vs. the Rosewill's 3yr parts and 1yr labor.