It seems from other responses I got that my faulty power supply had burnt
out my hard drive.  I had a 233 Mhz computer with an AT power supply and it
always made a little click noise when I turned the computer on.  (I have not
been using it I gave it to someone else).  They gave it back to me and said
the hard drive has cluster errors and scandisk freezes after 59% and windows
won't start up.  It had a 3 gb Hard drive in it and I had another hard drive
that I had had in it before and they both worked, so I put the other one in
it and the format failed and it wouldn't go through the scandisk either.  It
seemed to have made a louder than usual pop noise when I turned it on.  From
what other people have told me it must have been a hardware issue, probably
the power supply.

I have just changed the AT power supply with another and am waiting for a
hard drive to put into it.  This power supply looks cleaner than the other
one which was very dusty and was in a computer I believe worked and wasn't
used much.  I am just hoping this problem doesn't arise again.  I am just
wondering if the computer is getting old, or if the power supply is the only
problem and the rest of the mother board is ok.  I don't understand
electricity much and don't quite understand how a power supply that still
technically works can surge and burn out a hard drive like that.

Is there something more simplistic about the AT power supply compared to the
newer ATX that causes you to be able to audibly hear the hard drive click on
or unseat from rest when they power up because my new one doesn't make this
noise when it's turned on?

thank you very much,
Robert Kupferer

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