Is it my hard drive or motherboard?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Shawn Milochik
  • Start date Start date
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Shawn Milochik

Last night, my computer seemed to freeze up. I use Linux, so that
isn't something that you expect. I was able to use CTRL+ALT+F1 to
get to a terminal, but I couldn't log in. When I tried to switch
back to the GUI terminal, it was just black. The hard drive light
was on steady on the box.

I eventually just powered it off and went to bed. When I woke up
this morning, the primary master was not detected. I pulled the
power plug to the computer, and unplugged both the IDE and power
cables from the hard drive, then reconnected them and the power.
Still, no primary master.

I plugged in another drive as the primary master, and it booted
fine. Then I plugged the original drive back in, and it seems
fine again.

So, my thoughts are that it's either the MB or the HDD. Any
ideas? The HDD is a Maxtor 30gig that's less than a year old.

The MB is an ECS K7S5A, almost 2 years old. The processor is
an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. I backed up my data to my fileserver
today, so I'm prepared to replace anything. However, since it
glitched this morning, it *appears* to be back to normal.

Shawn
 
Last night, my computer seemed to freeze up. I use Linux, so that
isn't something that you expect. I was able to use CTRL+ALT+F1 to
get to a terminal, but I couldn't log in. When I tried to switch
back to the GUI terminal, it was just black. The hard drive light
was on steady on the box.

I eventually just powered it off and went to bed. When I woke up
this morning, the primary master was not detected. I pulled the
power plug to the computer, and unplugged both the IDE and power
cables from the hard drive, then reconnected them and the power.
Still, no primary master.

I plugged in another drive as the primary master, and it booted
fine. Then I plugged the original drive back in, and it seems
fine again.

So, my thoughts are that it's either the MB or the HDD. Any
ideas? The HDD is a Maxtor 30gig that's less than a year old.

The MB is an ECS K7S5A, almost 2 years old. The processor is
an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. I backed up my data to my fileserver
today, so I'm prepared to replace anything. However, since it
glitched this morning, it *appears* to be back to normal.

Shawn
Click to expand...

I've seen a bunch of K7S5A with failing, vented capacitors, the dual
rows around the FETs to the left of the CPU socket. This would at
first seem unrelated to your issue but if the motherboard is trying to
POST or other components are seeing dirty power then it could happen.

You might inspect those caps and use a voltage meter to take readings
at the power supply leads, also check the BIOS Health Monitor voltage
readings since an onboard power problem should also be reflected
there, though it's refresh interval might be too low to easily see the
problem so a decent voltmeter is still a better test.


Dave
 
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