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Is my power supply the culprit?

Tags:
  • Power Supplies
  • Hard Drives
  • Computers
  • Boot
  • Components
  • Linux
  • Asus
Last response: in Components
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November 27, 2013 8:02:45 AM

Computer: Asus CG5720

(If you dont know anything about Linux read anyway, its not important, this is a hardware issue)

About a month ago, I noticed that I couldn't boot into my hard drive on a consistent basis. Naturally, I blamed the hard drive, and bought a SSD and a 1 tb HDD. I tried installing my OS (Kubuntu Linux) onto the SSD. The installer definitely noticed the hard drive, it even reported the size and the brand of it. So I install it on there only to find that I cant boot into it in either IDE or AHCI mode in my bios.

So, I tried to install the OS on my terabyte hard drive. Same thing, the OS notices the size and the brand of the hard drive, it installs its self onto it. I switch it over to IDE mode, and sure enough, it doesnt boot into it. Now I doubt all three hard drives are bad... So I think it must be something else. Keep in mind that when I boot into puppy linux (an operating system that runs entirely in ram and is stored on my USB drive) I can mount the hard drive and I can see files that my OS put on it.

If I try to boot into the hard drive only, it often hangs or just doesnt detect the hard drive

Also, occasionally, though rarely, my computer wont boot into the USB if I have it plugged in prior to the boot process.

As I research this im thinking the problem is related to either the power supply or the mother board. But I don't know a whole lot about computer hardware, so if someone could help me out here that would be great.

More about : power supply culprit

a b ) Power supply
a b Ĉ ASUS
November 27, 2013 8:12:31 AM

I can't possibly see the issue being your Power supply, if it were taht it wouldn't boot at all, being on a puppy linux woulnd't function either. I would say the most likely culprit is a bad motherboard.
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a b ) Power supply
November 27, 2013 8:25:08 AM

give a bios update a try and reset everything
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Related resources
November 27, 2013 9:18:07 AM

so I updated the bios, during the post it definitely "detects" the hard drive, it still fails to boot into it. I suspect the original hard drive is perfectly fine, and just to make sure that the OS installed correctly, I used the old hard drive that I used for years, and sure enough that didnt boot as well as the others. The BIOS thing definitely should have been done but I think theres more to this.

Is there a cheap way I can trouble shoot this more? I'm still unsure if its the power supply or the motherboard. If I'm not mistaken, power supply failures can make it so something like a hard drive isnt getting enough power, so it seems that this is a possible symptom of a bad power supply. But I don't know the symptoms of a bad motherboard as it seems very difficult to detect.
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Best solution

a b ) Power supply
a b Ĉ ASUS
November 27, 2013 9:24:14 AM

unplug everything from your comptuer that isn't a neccesity (GPU/Optical drives/USB stuff) and see if it boots like that. If the powersupply is just too weak it should boot if you take a few things off the power supply. It doesn't take much voltage to spin a HD, in case you haven't try different SATA cables, and different sata ports on the board, and if possible a different sata power connector to the HD.
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