On 14 Sep 98 at 22:15, Michael Tabak wrote:

> I have been having intermittent hard drive problems (I/O errors; hangs;
> etc.).  Sometimes these occur during a session when everything had been
> proceeding normally.  Other times, they occur during bootup, when it sounds
> as if either the hard drive is not starting up at all, or is having
> difficulty staying operational.
>
> My computer case is from 1991, and this has occurred with 2 different hard
> drives, both of which are less than 1 year old.
>
> 1. Can a faulty internal power supply cause this problem?

  It's possible.  I recently discovered that one power wire to one of
my drives had been almost severed, and I suspect that was
contributing to the random reboots that had plagued the machine.

> 2. If so, the internal power supply (from 1991) says it's 200
> Watts.  Can I use a new case with a 250 Watts power supply?

  That should work.  The wattage rating on the power supply is a
maximum total for the devices you want to power.  Three household
lightbulbs (60W each) will run as well off a 250W supply as a 200W,
but not very well off a 150W.
  Assuming that the problem is that your current arrangement is
stretching the envelope on a 200W supply, moving to a 250W supply is
likely to provide relief.

  [Since it takes a bit of extra energy to spin up a disk from a
standing start, your "bootup" scenario definitely sounds like a power
problem.]
  [A good power supply will run about twice what a cheap new case
(including power supply) costs.  Moving to a new case may not be the
best thing to do.]

  I've sometimes experienced power problems that went away when I
made sure that no set of drive power leads was supplying more than
one hard drive.  My gut feeling is that even if total capacity is
sufficient, a single set of leads may not deliver enough "juice" to
meet the spin-up needs of more than one drive.

David G

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