4hdd's in my pc used to work now there's issues

[Keeny1975]

Hello,
Ok so in my pc I have 4 hard drives and they used to work fine.
One morning I went to turn my pc on and it struggled but came on. This happened a few times and now it won't turn on at all unless I disconnect the 3 slaves. I've run scan disk on all the slaves and there's no bad sectors or problems on either of them.

I formatted the main drive and reinstalled windows and that has not solved the issue either.
Two hard slaves are plugged in and the pc fires up fine but only one drive is recognised. If I plug the 3rd drive in the pc dosent start.

Any thoughts? There not portable drives there all in the tower and connected to the pc.

The main drive and 2 slaves are sata and 1 drive is IDE with a sata converter.

 

[ronintexas]

What type of PSU do you have for the computer? What is the configuration - the reason I ask is 2 fold - first, the wattage for the PSU may not be enough for your system requirements. Second, the PSU could be delivering power, but not enough to power all 3 drives. A typical hard drive will consume 3-8W idle, 10-30W during high disk utilization.

 

[Keeny1975]

750w

 

[Keeny1975]

I unplugged all the slaves and tried them 1 at a time.

Slave 1 works fine (but then it always does with all 3 slaves plugged in)

Slave 2 on its own dosent stop the pc from firing up but doesn't show up in "my computer" either

Slave 3 same as slave 2.

They both work fine on my Hdd portable hub but will not work inside the pc.

I've ordered a 1000w psu to eliminate that from my inquery.

 

[ronintexas]

750W should be enough to drive 3 hard drives...unless there is an issue with the power supply with the load applied. Since they work fine on the portable hub...I would say it is a power issue.

 

[Keeny1975]

I would have thought so too but slave drive 1 works fine so I unplugged all of them apart from slave 2 and it wouldn't work, same with slave 3.

Both slave would a higher capacity drive need more power to run?

 

[ronintexas]

Drives will use different power based on the number of spindles, green technology, RPM of the drive and a few other factors. I have noticed anywhere from 3W to 30W of power used by hard drives, depending upon their state in the computer.

When building systems, I usually count 30W per hard drive, and get the specifications of the CPU, GPU, mobo and other peripheral devices. When added up, I multiply the total by 1.5 to get the size of power supply for the system. If I estimate 300W, I buy at least a 450W power supply, and always buy a trusted brand name.

It may be a bit of overkill, but if you cut it too close, and the system is drawing a heavy load, with an aged power supply (the wattage rating will drop over time), you will have issues. I am often amazed at some vendors that build PC's, where they will have $1,500+ computers builds, and put a $25 power supply in it...and that is why I build my own. The PSU sends power to all of your components, and if it has issues, can fry them all....