[H-GEN] My SATA, motherboard nightmare

Nick Kwiatkowski nickolas at au1.ibm.com
Mon Jan 29 19:20:11 EST 2007


James C. McPherson wrote on 29/01/2007 02:16:37 PM:

> David Duffy wrote:
> > Brendon Higgins wrote:
> >> Here's a problem I've been having with SATA harddrives, filesystem
> >> corruption, and my ASUS A8N-SLI motherboard. It's a bit lengthy, but
> >> details pretty much everything I've tried (which is quite a bit). I'm
> >> looking for confirmation (or otherwise) that what I've done and the
> >> conclusions I've come to are sane. This one has been driving me nuts.
> >> I'm looking for opinions. Am I right? Do I have any idea what I'm
> >> talking about? Is there something I've missed that I ought to try?
> > I would try the power supply. All sorts of odd things can be put down
to
> > bad power.
> > David...
>
> I second David's suggestion. I'd add that subtly-marginal power
> supplies have form in this area - not just for sata. In the years
> when I was doing support I came across a number of cases (4 or 5)
> where despite all evidence to the contrary the problem was either
> a dodgy psu or a slightly marginal power feed into said psu.
>

I third it, as there can be a couple of reasons that this happens.
Motherboards and PSU will built to a spec, they are build by separate
companies with separate views of that specification.

Also, since the motherboard is old, the components on them age. Most
notability the capacitors, most PC motherboards use electrolytic, which are
not stable over time ie will swell and lose capacitance. This means they
will not smooth the voltages supplied by the PSU as well as when they were
new. Hence why older motherboard get more cranky about the PSU that they
are connected too.

Cheers,

Nik

Nickolas Kwiatkowski
IT Architect (Certified)
Architecture Services
Global Business Services - Application Services
IBM Global Services, Brisbane, Australia
phone:  07 3213 2149,  mobile:  0412 121 276,  email:  nickolas at au1.ibm.com
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" - Albert Einstein





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