Hard drives spin down then spin back up.

[ZBOLTZ]

I have an issue with some of my hard drives in my computer. About once an hour, some of my hard drives will just power down and then spin back up. While they spin back up, my computer will freeze for about five seconds until they get powered back up. I am running 7 hard drives with an Abit IC7 motherboard, Intel 2.4C Ghz processor, 2 gigs of ram, Windows Vista Ultimate, 6 case fans, on a Thermaltake 420 Watt power supply.

I am wondering if this would be caused by a bad power supply or maybe I am using too small of a power supply. I am thinking about going to a 500 watt power supply. Any comments would be greatly apreciated.

 

[KGB]

Welcome to the Forums! :beer:

Check your power management settings relating to hard drives (you know, power down after xx minutes).

If that's not the issue, you certainly are taxing that power supply anyway.
Are you using a high-end (ie power hungry) videp card?

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: KGBMAN
Welcome to the Forums! :beer:

Check your power management settings relating to hard drives (you know, power down after xx minutes).

If that's not the issue, you certainly are taxing that power supply anyway.
Are you using a high-end (ie power hungry) videp card?

Yeah, look in to what he said, there are power management settings that will power down hard drives after a certain amount of time. Honestly I'm suprised you can even boot in to windows running all those drives off a weak PSU. The thermaltake 420w only has 18a on the 12v rail, which is patheticly weak, most 300w PSU's have that much. The hardrives, CPU, fans, and video card are all running of the 12v rail. First check the power management settings for the hard drives, and then I would look in to getting a new PSU, a quality one, with strong 12v rails, which is the most important rail in a modern PC. Wattage alone means nothing, if it's using low quality parts, and not giving the power to the rail that needs it the most.

 

[ZBOLTZ]

I think that this psu gives 18 amps for the 12 volt rail. It might be lower ut I am not quite sure. I looked at a 500 watt psu off of newegg made by Rosewill and the 12 volt rail on that one only had 20 amps.

The video card that I am running is probably low end. I am running a Geforce 6200 OC for my video card.

I looked into the power options and I did see something that said turn off hard drives after 20 minutes. I turned that to never so I will see that that will do for me.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: ZBOLTZ
I think that this psu gives 18 amps for the 12 volt rail. It might be lower ut I am not quite sure. I looked at a 500 watt psu off of newegg made by Rosewill and the 12 volt rail on that one only had 20 amps.

The video card that I am running is probably low end. I am running a Geforce 6200 OC for my video card.

I looked into the power options and I did see something that said turn off hard drives after 20 minutes. I turned that to never so I will see that that will do for me.

Rosewill is another PSU to aviod..you want to look at a quality brand, that uses quality compents, don't replace junk with slightly better junk, replace it with something good, Enermax, Fortron, Seasonic, Enhance..my 350w Enermax had 22A on the 12v rail..and it was built with quality components, unlike the thermaltake and rosewill is probably even worse than thermaltake.

 

[KGB]

Originally posted by: stevty2889

Originally posted by: ZBOLTZ
I think that this psu gives 18 amps for the 12 volt rail. It might be lower ut I am not quite sure. I looked at a 500 watt psu off of newegg made by Rosewill and the 12 volt rail on that one only had 20 amps.

The video card that I am running is probably low end. I am running a Geforce 6200 OC for my video card.

I looked into the power options and I did see something that said turn off hard drives after 20 minutes. I turned that to never so I will see that that will do for me.

Rosewill is another PSU to aviod..you want to look at a quality brand, that uses quality compents, don't replace junk with slightly better junk, replace it with something good, Enermax, Fortron, Seasonic, Enhance..my 350w Enermax had 22A on the 12v rail..and it was built with quality components, unlike the thermaltake and rosewill is probably even worse than thermaltake.

Good advice from a good member... take it. :thumbsup:

 

[ZBOLTZ]

What do you guys think about this PSU? This is a 350 watt PSU from Enermax. It is rated at 350 watts, but its 12 volt rail is rated at 26 amps, much higher than the Rosewill and also my thermaltake.

Envermax PSU

 

[ZBOLTZ]

I also wanted to say that I am running my system 2 gigs (2 x 1GB) of ram by Mushkin. This is the redline series that rates at DDR500. I am running this with an Abit IC7 Motherboard and an Intel 2.4C Ghz Processor. This processor can really overclock, but I cannot get my FSB above 250 at a 1:1 divider. I also had some Geil ram before that was rated at DDR550 and I could not get that above a FSB of 250 either. I am wondering if my PSU is what has been creating that problem. Maybe my ram just is not getting enough power. At any rate, this ram that I have now runs at really tight timings for its spead. I have it set to 2 2 3 6 at DDR 500.

 

[ZBOLTZ]

I did some more looking at power supplys and game up with this one at newegg.
Enermax PSU

I looked at my Thermaltake PSU and its 12v rail is rated at 18 amps. This Enermax PSU has two 12v rails and they are both rated at 22 amps each. I think this would be a much better psu than the 350 watt Enermax. I looked at the Rosewill PSU and it was a dual 12v rail psu also with 18 amps per both 12v rails. I am thinking about going with the 480 watt PSU in the link above from newegg.

Details of this PSU at Enermax's website

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: ZBOLTZ
I did some more looking at power supplys and game up with this one at newegg.
Enermax PSU

I looked at my Thermaltake PSU and its 12v rail is rated at 18 amps. This Enermax PSU has two 12v rails and they are both rated at 22 amps each. I think this would be a much better psu than the 350 watt Enermax. I looked at the Rosewill PSU and it was a dual 12v rail psu also with 18 amps per both 12v rails. I am thinking about going with the 480 watt PSU in the link above from newegg.

Details of this PSU at Enermax's website

That PSU is deffinatly a good choice.

 

[ZBOLTZ]

I did a lot of reading tonight when I got off of work and I think I am going to go with that PSU. It actually is not that much more expensive than the Rosewill PSU and it seems to be made of much better quality. I read up quite a bit on the dual 12v rails which this has with each rail having 22 amps. They say that the dual rails help for stability especially if you run fans and overclock. They say that this enables your Mobo, Graphics Card and CPU to get a much cleaner and stable power by not allowing hard drives and other devices from steeling the power from them. So I am going to go with that and maybe it will also solve my problem of getting my FSB above 250 Mhz.

By the way, I changed the power settings for my hard drives before I left to work and I have not had any problems with them since. Damn Windows Vista! I spent quite a bit of time working on that issue and was never able to find anything, so thanks a lot for all of the input that you guys gave me. Now I don't get these short freezes