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First post, by kanecvr

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Hi guys.

I've been wrestling with this problem for some time now - it seems some no-name cheap PSUs as well as some brand(ish) name non 80+ PSUs have problems powering up most PATA hard drives. The machines themselves run fine, and I ran an experiment, powering the HDD via an old AT PSU - everything worked flawlesly... here's the kicker - back in the day (2000-2005) all everyone used were these no name chinese pieces of crap, and the HDD's ran OK - now when I try to build even a PIII + GF2 MX + 40GB PATA HDD, the HDD will stop spinning when booting or spinup and spin down right after post...

anyone else encounter this issue?

Reply 1 of 4, by Ampera

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The keyword is Used. No name cheap Chinese supplies are terrible because they are made out of no name cheap Chinese parts.

Pick up a good OEM supply, or use one of the rebadged supplies. I have had a lot of luck on old systems with Logisys PSUs.

Other ideas include using different hard drives, trying other systems, other motherboards.

Basically when something doesn't work on one configuration, but does on another, you keep changing that configuration until it works, and then that's the fault. It could be a buggered PATA controller, hard drive, etc.

You really never gave us any information at what you have tried. A bad PSU can be the cause, and just because everybody used something back in the day, doesn't mean it's good. Everybody used asbestos and we are still dealing with it. Heroin was marketed by Bayer as a non-addictive cough suppressant.

Sorry if I am seriously misunderstanding you here. I personally have not had problems with PSUs and hard drives, but I always buy PSUs that have a good name attached to them to prevent this sort of issue.

Reply 2 of 4, by kanecvr

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But here's the kicker - I had no such issues back in the day. Also, it seems that older (2000-2002) cheap chinese PSUs are not affected by this (at least some).

Reply 3 of 4, by torindkflt

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Weren't power supplies also a victim of the capacitor plague of the early 2000s? If so, then that would explain why old PSUs from that time period no longer work correctly, yet ones from the 90s still work perfectly fine.

Reply 4 of 4, by PhilsComputerLab

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I'm using more IDE drives lately and must say I'm really liking them. I haven't had any issues, on the contrary, I like that everything "just works". I'm mostly using Seagate Drives, Barracuda V and 7200.7.

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