Power Supply?????? 1

[dcusick]

Ok heres the story. I have an AMD Athlon 550 processor, 128 meg ram, ATX MB, and it seems like my power supply burnt out. For the past few days, I've smelt a burnt electricity smell from my computer. I have a 250 watt power supply in there, and according to the company, that's enough. From what I've heard, a 300 watt P/S is needed for the Athlons. Anyway, this morning, when I turned on my computer, smoke came out of the P/S fan and it has a really bad burning smell. Nothing came on. No indicator lights, no fans, nothing!!! I went to the store and purchased a 300 Watt P/S and replaced it. I'm still haveing the same problem. Absolutely nothing is coming on. I've seen a lot of mobo, processor and ram problems and I've never seen anything like this. Could the mobo and/or processor have burned out with the P/S????? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Doug [sig][/sig]

 

[pilkis]

normally no , PS is well protected system from outgoing overvoltage , in case if it exceeds level it just make short circuit and cut power completly. Why smoke comes - its another question , if its after long work - possible overload , but in the morning ... maybe weather conditions or something like that ? or wrong 110/220V switch position ... aaa.. I remember i saw same thing. Reason was because there was connected printer to computer and powered from another power socket , and there was phase difference , after this was damaged ports ( all ) , and chip responsible for starting ATX power supply and for keeping CMOS.
Now what you can try , if you have multimeter , in the ATX connector is one wire ( actually two )with outgoing voltage even its turned off. If you short this to ground, power supply has start running. After you can try manually switch on motherboard. If nothing - look well on motherboard , possible you will notice burned out chip.

Any question pilkiss@takas.lt [sig][/sig]

 

[dcusick]

Okay, after some quick troubleshooting, I found out it was the harddrive. I put one power plug in at a time, and it booted every time, except if it was in the hard drive. I put the harddrive in another machine too, and no luck. Does anyone know what happened to it?? Is there any way to recover that hard drive????? [sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Yeah, a data recovery service. they can do wonders, just short of walking on water. and they do not come cheap. [sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[pilkis]

If you have same hard drive , you can change the electronic part of hard drive , and all information will be accesible.
But hard drive HAVE be really same ( not just same size ,but same plate numbers , head numbers )
[sig][/sig]

 

[edfair]

Some chip on the board may have developed an internal short. Motor windings may have developed an internal short. An internal cable may have grounded out. These are machines, small machines, and subject to Murphy's first law.
Sometimes you can detect the failure point by visual inspection. Other times it requires cutting traces on the board, loosening connectors, or other such. But I have found that the effort to resolve the problem and get the data back costs more in the long run than paying professionals to do it.
Think the last one used by a customer of mine charged $10.00 per mb restored to tape. They recovered about 300 mb for $3000.
And beware of some people that advertise the service. Recovery is specialized work and there are only about 6 to 10 companies that are really good at it, the rest are dangerous to your data.
[sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[jsauce]

Have you thought about Powerquest's Lost and Found? They also have a program called Search and Rescue.

http://www.powerquest.com

The software is expensive, but not as expensive as using a data recovery service. [sig]<p>John D. Saucier<br><a href=mailto:jsauce@netadvances.com>jsauce@netadvances.com</a><br>jsauce@diablo2.com<br>
Use The second email if the first doesn't work.[/sig]

 

[tekkey1]

Edfair is right, if that drive is dragging down the P/S in both systems, then there's definitely some high current fault (short) in the drive somwhere. Problem is, if you can't get the drive to at least spin up, then data recovery isn't an option.

- John M. [sig]<a href=mailto:jonnor@bellatlantic.net>jonnor@bellatlantic.net</a><br>"Remember you are unique, just like everyone else"[/sig]

 

[edfair]

Good data recovery company will open it up, pull the shaft assy, and put the shaft into another frame with good motor windings. But that's why the cost is so high. They also use their own analysis box to do the reads. It can handle lots of problems.
Last one I was involved with reported that data bits were 3 bit cells offset late and I have no reason to dispute their claim as there were flaky things going on with the drive.
the question remains. Is the cost to recover worth it? If a business system with critical data then definitely yes. Game machine probably no. So how bad does he want the data?
[sig]<p>Ed Fair<br><a href=mailto: efair@atlnet.com> efair@atlnet.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. <br>
Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.<br>
[/sig]

 

[tekkey1]

I stand corrected. Depending on the drive, most data recovery services will just swap parts into the failing drive to get it to spin up so they can start data recovery, but may not be able to safely remove the disks. However, if the spindle motor isn't bonded together, the disk assembly can be removed and remounted with a good motor. As Ed says, this is a tremendously expensive proposition, and needs to be weighed against the cost of the lost data.

- John M. [sig]<a href=mailto:jonnor@bellatlantic.net>jonnor@bellatlantic.net</a><br>"Remember you are unique, just like everyone else"[/sig]