Hey everyone, here is my problem -Previously (a week ago) I had 3 hard drives in my PC and it worked fine -Last week, I bought a fourth hard drive, put it in, turned on PC and everything worked -Next Day, turned on PC, it froze at the startup screen for like 4 minutes, then it told me something about S.M.A.R.T failed and press F1 to continue, I did, new hard drive didn't show up -I then dled Western Digital Hard Drive check and checked the S.M.A.R.T status of the new hard drive and it said it was fine -I disconnected the new hard drive and this error disappeared -I reconnected the new hard drive and (and here's the issue) and disconnected any of the OTHER hard drives, and my PC turned on normally (and new hard drive was working fine). It seems that when I connect the fourth hard drive (regardless of which one it is) I get the problem - now it won't even give me the S.M.A.R.T error, it just won't start up. Any Suggestions on what I should do? Thanks -Knivez
Here's the full specs as well: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6500 GPU: XFX 8800GT (nvidia) RAM: 6 Gigs DDR2 OS: Win7 Power Supply: HX 520W Corsair MOBO: P5K-E Asus Hard Drive 1: Seagate SATA 500gig (forgot model) Hard Drive 2: Western Digital Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640gigs, Hard Drive 3: Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB Hard Drive 4: Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB (New one)
I would check the chipset temperature...sometimes they start to overheat when you connect a lot of drives. If this is the case, you can get upgraded heatsinks for these chips.
sounds like sata controller problem or bios needs to be updated to latest version. have you checked asus site to see if others had something similar?
I think I've gotten it, I think it was a power issue, the 520W couldn't handle everything (+ 2DVD drives) so I removed a DVD drive and now it boots up fine. Thanks for the help though -Knivez
Does anyone else see the hole in the logic used here? A hard drive or DVD drive uses maybe 15 watts under full load; maybe half of that at idle...but we'll just call it 15w. If this 15W is the difference between being able to start or not, then the system would not have enough power to power the video card during games. More, if it really was a power issue like this (and you simply avoided 3D), then your PSU would be right at it's limits, with no safety net. I would assume that if you were to plug the drive back into the PSU, but not into the mainboard, then you would not have any issues.
Probably just one rail is being drawn down.. these modern psu's are pretty crap actually.. they have a "high" output well regulated 12v out.. and a low output poor reg 12v line.. I would just find a scrapper old "always on" AT psu and use that to power the drives... It will help anyway by reducing the spinup time on the hdd's. Had to do this many times when converting old servers to duplicators with 8 or 10 burners in them.
I'm no where close to being an expert, but when I start up my PC, i notice that my Video Card's Fan initially spins really really quickly, and then 4-5 seconds later it quiets down. The only other time I hear it spin that fast is when I'm playing a game which really pushes it to its limits. Maybe when I start the PC it utilizes a heck of a lot of power (hence the spinning). Well anyways, after having disconnected the DVD-drive my PC is continuously booting up normally, and I can game without any problems.
depending on videocard setup, the fan spins fast at startup & when playing graphics intense games\video but other then that will spin slow. how many sata & ide drives do you have?
I have 4, and the problem has now returned, Could it be the hard drive?? I'm honestly stumped. If its my computer, and it simply cant handle 4 drives, then I'll just get an external enclosure, but if its the hard drive, then I need to replace it... This really doesn't make any sense, I also see a pattern, when I first turn on my PC in the morning, it always gives me this problem, eventually PC will turn on (and hard drive wont appear in 'My Computer" folder. After like 30 minutes of PC being on, I restart and the hard drive loads without any problems.. does it need to like heat up or something? I'm just finding this pattern so weird. Any more ideas?
i think it is your psu is the problem as there is another thread recently with similar problem & it was the psu causing the problem. if dvd drive is disconnected & pc boots\loads alright with no issues at all with the different hd's then most likely is psu can't supply enough 12 volts ot amperage for 12 volts.
Maybe, but the thing is, the PC is now on, with all hard drives working and everything is fine - if it was the PSU, then wouldn't it never boot up properly, instead of booting up sometimes and not booting up at other times?
warmed up psu's work better than cold ones get a bigger psu.... get a HEAVY one a lot of psu's are feather light and no good at all if you are running it all on what sounds like a lightweight psu then it's probably running at it's max, when it does fail it's almost certainly going to take stuff with it
