Not enough power to my Hard Drive?

Hi,

I recently had a new computer built almost from scratch but using a three of my past components (just the sound card, PSU and my previous 300gb hard drive). Now I have two hard drives, the 300GB one with OS and program files on, and a 1.5TB hard drive used for all my storage.

If I leave the computer a while and then go to access the drive, it takes a short while to access (and I can hear a physical clicking sound inside the system as it springs back to life).

Lately it seems to be doing it more often - even whilst I am working on a PSD document that is saved to that drive for example.

Is there a setting I can use to keep it prepped and ready to access at all times, or is it due to my older PSU lacking power or something?

Thanks.

 

Take a look in Control Panel/Power Options assuming you have XP and set the drive to 'never'. This has nothing to do with your power supply, if there wasn't enough power the machine would die or not boot in the first place.

 

Thanks. I always had power options set to 'never turn off' in XP, but now I have Vista I ended up just turning off Display and Sleep options and thinking no more of it. After your post I looked again and just found further options under 'advanced'.

BTW, is it harmful leaving the hard disk on all the time? Instead of 'never', would it be better to just increase the time to, say, a 60-minute switch-off, rather than the (annoying) 20 mins it was set to?

 

But, it's kind of hard to advise you, when you don't give us all the technical details on just what kind of hardware you're talking about.
Chances are that a PSU from an OLD computer won't hold up to the increased current demands of a NEW computer.
So how about filling in ALL the blanks. ???

Happy Holidays!
The Shadow

 

I really don't know and folks are still debating whether it's better one way or the other. Just make sure that the drive has proper air circulation to keep the temps down. You obviously need the drive on all the time for your work so keep it that way for convenience. Of course you do make regular backups somewhere, right? Just in case.

EDIT: BTW, that second power scheme in Vista threw me for a loop until I figured out that I had to change the options in the lower level before things took. That's not 'user friendly' IMO.

 

The "turn off drives" feature is just to spin the drive motor down. No damage will be caused to the drive by leaving is spun up all the time, unless it overheats. However, bear in mind that drive life expectancy is measured in operating hours. Leaving is spun up constantly will result in these hours being used more quickly.

 

Wel, it wasn't that old.
My last computer was an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz, 2GB RAM, nVidia 6800 with 300GB HDD

My new computer that the same HDD and PSU went in is an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM, nVidia 9600GT with 1.5TB HDD.

By the way, in Power Options the option to 'Turn off hard disk after:__mins' does apply to any hard drive attached to the system doesn't it? - not just the system drive with the OS on?

 

One of the factors with power supplies is the wattage advertised. Anything over 400W and I think you should be fine.

Yes, the power options will apply to any internal drive. I am not sure about external ones, though.

 

Yeah, I only meant internal drives, thanks for the info.

 

The main reason I asked though is because I was suspicious due to one of my external 500gb drives causing a problem whenever I plugged it in to this computer. My actual drives seemed to disappear (along with the external one) and couldn't be accessed by using a shortcut, typing their drive letter or anything else, until I restarted - even though the external drive hasn't caused any problems before or since when being used with either an older computer or my new laptop...