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Weird electrical problems with hard drives and power supply
I'm going to put the background in the bottom paragraph, but since
it's lengthy, you might skip it and I'll cut right to the chase up front. My computer refuses to startup on its own power supply. If everything is detached but the motherboard (Asus A7N8X), then the fans turn on but the motherboard doesn't even post. If either of the two hard drives (80GB Seagate Barracudas, SATA) are connected to the power supply, then the supply makes a weird buzz when you try to start the computer and nothing happens, not even the fans. Currently, I've harvested a power supply and a hard drive with an old windows 98 installation from another computer. Now everything starts up fine. If I try to hook up one of the original hard drives to this new power supply, nothing turns on, not even the fans (although there's no buzz sound). So I'm kinda stuck, and I don't know what needs fixing: the original power supply, the hard drives, or both. Whats weird is that the problem is not just the original supply - since it can't even boot up the lone motherboard but the replacement supply can - and its not just the hard drives - since they keep the computer from starting under either supply. Very bizarre. So, in case you think it might help, here is how it got like this. The computer, which I built, had been having problems with seizing. Every couple times a week to would freeze completely and kinda beep. Then, after about 30 seconds, it would return perfectly fine. When I finally opened up the case, I found that one of the fans had been jammed. I figured the processor was just over heating. When I detached the power to the fan to remove it, I also disconnected the power to a hard drive. Then I turned on the computer with the case open and suddenly figured out the hard drive was powerless. So, I figured I'd plug it in real quick. Big Mistake. There was a really weird loud noise and the heavy smell of ozone (which I think gets made during short circuits sometimes). The computer shut off. I tried to start it again when I was sure that the power cables were correct, without success. I finally detached everything but the motherboard and found, as mentioned above, that the fans came on but the motherboard wouldnt boot (it would makes audible sounds if it is booting or having problems, and it was silent). Furthermore, if I plugged in a hard drive, nothing worked. After much tinkering, I tried the new power supply, and found that it booted the motherboard fine. Then I added components and found everything to work unless one of the original hard drives was connect. In this cast, nothing worked. So now I am running a clunky 5 year old copy of windows 98 with a 2.5 GHZ processor, 512 megs of ram, and beautiful dual monitors. Not where I want to be. I really need my hard drives back, and I need to find out if the first supply is salvagable. Thanks for absolutely anything you can think of. |
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The circuit board on your HD has something fried, but the platters and head should be OK. Find an identical (very identical, you know, model numbers and such) HD (preferably working), and then swap the good circuit board over to the old drive. You will have to be very careful, I have my doubts if it can be done by the average person, but hey, you might be lucky. Just make sure you don't have power connected to the drive while you change the boards. Just kidding. I tried this with a dirve about 3 years ago and it worked just fine, mind you the data had better be pretty valuable to risk screwing two drives. I think all the HDDs now have a little cage over the electronics and since I haven't taken one apart recently, I don't know if you can even get at the board. |
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