Hard drive about to fry? Or power supply is nigh?

[Deja Q]

I've noticed of late that my video capture computer crashes more often, rebooting of its own accord and then saying no hard drive is present. (I've two in the syetm; one for OS and programs and the other for data).

It's a 4 year old power supply with two 200GB hard drives. Athlon 1.3GHz CPU and 1GB of RAM. With NIC and Radeon (original model) video card.

After the crash, if I power off the computer, I noticed the main hard drive (the one not being seen) is a bit warm, but nothing terrible.

After keeping the PC off for several hours and powering up, the HD is found and OS boots perfectly. Has been stable for 3 hours now (I also booted up after unplugging all non-essential hardware, which was basically a CD-ROM drive, but every watt spared helps...)

I am about to ghost the program drive, just to be safe. But the symptoms seem more indicative of the power supply. Especially random crashes and devices not being found.

The p/s is claimed to be rated 400W, but it's a cheap model that came with the case.

I did recently buy a new 160GB HD for $80, new... but I discovered I really didn't need it, and am not keen on spending any more money than I must to complete my video archival process.

What would you think, given this criteria?

[bemildred]

1. How are the fans? Is it clean inside? nt

[Deja Q]

2. I did clean the main CPU fan as it had a ton of dust. Checked that this

AM.

Of course, I've had the cover off ever since so it could have been an all-round heating issue,..

[bemildred]

3. Power supplies have fans too.

When they get too hot they can stop working so good.
I just had to replace one on an old eMachines box.

You might have more than one problem, and doing fault
isolation with intermittent issues like this can be
tedious, so sometimes it's better to just start eliminating
issues one by one with pauses to see if it still crops
up, until it goes away.

You ought to check the CMOS battery too, although that
doesn't seem like the issue here, at least I can't see
how it would be the problem.

[Deja Q]

4. The p/s is clean. But I did notice that the CPU fan had been making noise

of nary a normal vibration.

I might be replacing it; I've got a few spares.

It's been 7+ hours and it's been stable. Maybe it was ultimately a heat overload.

[hobbit709]

5. More cooling

Those large drives get quite hot. I put cooling fans on all my drives now and it makes a lot of difference. Extra cooling fan or two on the case will help. Just by putting an extra case fan in, it dropped my cpu temp 15°C. Yeah, it's a little noisier but which would you rather have.
1. little more fan noise?
2. click, whirr, seek; click, whirr, seek?
If you have a monitoring utility with your driver cd that lets you see what's happening inside the case, run it.

[Deja Q]

6. Actually, it's the 40GB drive that got warm. The 160GB drive was cool.

I'll pick up a drive fan tomorrow. Better safe than sorry and it'll help the lifespan too. :-)

[bemildred]

7. Good point. nt