WD Sata drives won't power up

[dps50]

I recently purchased 2 WD 120 SATA drives. I am installing them into a P4 system.

Everything is pretty much new, I bought it in September or so.

The system is as follows:

Aopen 4speMAX Board
P4 2.4 CPU
Asus 256mb 8x APG Card
512 RAM
30GB Wd IDE Drive
Mwave Box with 430W PS

Here is the problem, when I plug the power to the 120s the system won't start up. It powers up for about 2 seconds then shuts off. I can have the SATA data cables plugged in with now power and the system will power up, of course this is of little use since the 120s are not powered. I have tried numerous configurations. I have unplugged every device except the CPU fan, plugged only ONE SATA drive and the system does the same thing; it will power up for 2 seconds then shut down.

I have checked the BIOS as best I can to see if there is some type of error fault setting to shut down the system but cannot find any. The power supply is an "MWAVE" PS that came with the box. This is where I think the problem lies...the PS. The board doesnt even have a chance hardly to recognize the drives before it gets shut down. However the PS should have enough "juice" in it to power up one SATA drive and the CPU.

Whatever the problem, it starts whenever I plug the power cable into the SATA drives.

 

[pweegar]

Welllll.. if you suspect the ps, why not remove it and put in a brand new one???? If that works, you know what the problem is.

 

[oldbe]

Recall reading on SATA, a recommendation for a PS to support SATA. Not the generic type. Browse/Search this site or Google for specific info. Consensus seems to be for a PS peculiar to SATA drives.

 

[snoopy6129]

I'm guessing the issue maybe the power supply unit. Quite possibly the circuit breaker within the PS unit tripped.

I actually just got my new WD 250GB SATA drive this week. Plugged it in to my system and it works great. Even though the drive supports Molex or SATA power connector, I connected the drive using the Molex power connector (don't have a power supply with SATA power connector, yet.) So, i can say that my drive works fine being powered via Molex.

Even though you power supply is rated at 430W, you need to check to see if the unit is supplying clean and consistent power. If you have a digital multimeter, get a voltage reading. A 5 volt line should read 5 volts on your DMM (-/+ a few percentage points is ok).

Test the drive on a friend's PC or borrow a friend's reliable PS unit. Narrow where the fault may be. Also, hop to your motherboard manufacturer's website and check to see if there's a BIOS update that may address your problem.

If you end up getting a new PS unit, I recommend Antec (

http://www.antec-inc.com)

or Thermaltake (

http://www.thermaltake.com).

Thermaltake just came out with a model that has dual SATA power connectors. Both offer reliable units. (Just my 2-cents)

 

[dps50]

I hooked one of the drives up to an old PS, 250W. The drive powered up fine. My guess is this is just same generic PS. Looking at the PS is says Peak power 430W. I ordered a thermaltake 480. Should be here this week. bad news is the 120s were going into a mirror to have a backup of all my info I had on an external 120 WD drive. I didn't use the drive much except for listening to music mostly since it had about 3000 mp3s on it. Well after only 6 months the drive died. Drive won't power up, checked the power box, checked the board inside teh external drive case, everything was getting power. hook the ext drive up to my desktop, still won't power up. Just not my week for computers. I new it would happen it was just a matter of when, i was hoping to get the 120s up and running in time but not soon enough. Oh well that is another problem. Thanks for everyones help. Moral of the story is buy a real power supply and backup often.

 

[jurgen36]

It is most likely the power supply, if you change it go for a big unit. I use a 550 watt supply, after I had a lot of problems with a 450 watt supply, which works fine in other systems. Regards

Jurgen