Computer Issues (An Ongoing Discussion)

[Jay Beckman]

Didn't see a "Hardware" thread so I thought I'd start one with a question:

I'm in search of a computer guru who can get fair prices on parts and help with installations and who will troubleshoot for the price of lunch or a fifth of their favorite.  If you have such a person in your circle, would you share them with me either here or via PM?

So far I've been "rear ended" by one local chain of computer stores and by New Egg as well and I'm tired of paying good money for what I'm sure is simple work and not being able to properly discuss it either before or after.

Thanks...

(Note To Mods: Feel free to re-locate this if there's a better location.)

[Stephen Marshall]

Pm sent!

[cpasley]

Jay ,if your still looking let me know

[F-16_fixer]

Jay (or anyone for that matter)  I build and repair computers quite often.  But I'm down in Tucson so I can't always help out but if you need advice feel free to call or email or PM or whatever and I'll give you a hand.

[Jay Beckman]

All offers duly noted.  Thanks Gents...

The wide-range of knowledge around here never ceases to amaze!

[Jay Beckman]

Update: I do have my desktop back up and running (more or less) but let me toss this issue out and see if anyone can help me kill just one more gremlin:

My computer will not complete the boot routine with external hard drives attached (it used to...) One's a WD 1.5Tb and the other is a Seagate 2Tb.  If I leave them unpowered until after the computer boots, all is well once they are found and mounted.  I do have an externally powered USB Hub I can try but early testing with it didn't yield much of a change.

Computer has a 480W P/S so I wonder if it just can't offer enough juice at boot to get everything up and running?  I know from additional research that 480W was not enough to power the 1Gb nVidia card I had in it at one point.  Plus, nVidia and Adobe do not play  well together so I went back to a 512Mb ATI card and both Lightroom and Photoshop now play nice again.

[cpasley]

Yeah that is quite a bit of hard drive for your power supply to run ,although one of my machines is running a 350W power supply with 1.5TB internal and the occasional 2TB external on top of that an NVIDIA 1GB card ,sound card with front panel ,usb card ,firewire card and a dvd burner plus a dvd rom and never had a power issue ,so really unless the power supply is going bad I would look elsewhere ,what type of hub are you using and dumb question but the external drives are purely for storage right ,your not trying to boot off them or run programs ,plus the source USB ,is it on the motherboard or is it off like a PCI usb card?

[Jay Beckman]

Yeah that is quite a bit of hard drive for your power supply to run ,although one of my machines is running a 350W power supply with 1.5TB internal and the occasional 2TB external on top of that an NVIDIA 1GB card ,sound card with front panel ,usb card ,firewire card and a dvd burner plus a dvd rom and never had a power issue ,so really unless the power supply is going bad I would look elsewhere ,what type of hub are you using and dumb question but the external drives are purely for storage right ,your not trying to boot off them or run programs ,plus the source USB ,is it on the motherboard or is it off like a PCI usb card?

- Drives are storage only...
- The powered hub I have available (but I'm not using) is a Belkin with one in and seven out
- I have USB ports on the back that are off the MB (plus two in the front) and there is an expansion card that gives me four more.

I'm told that USB architecture gives the most juice in descending order?  Most greedy devices (hard drives) should be in the highest ports with passive things like printers, tablets or a mouse in the lowest?  Sound Right?

[cpasley]

Yes Jay thats right ,USB ports ,especially ones being daisy chained will give the most power the closer to the main source but also for the most part USB can support a lot of items on one main port ,I had thought you were using the powered hub but if your not I would definatly be using that considering external hard drives have moving parts and they draw all their power to move those parts from one primary USB port which I can imagine is tough for it to do sometimes

[Jay Beckman]

Now that I have the graphics issue more or less solved with a less thirsty card, I'll try the powered hub again....

I'll report back.  Thanks for the help!   

[Paul Dumm]

OK chris, I got one for you. I got two external hard drives. The computer only recognized one. It used to recognized both of them. I tryed to reinstall it but no good. Help please.

[cpasley]

Paul ,do you try them one at a time ,I asume probably not ,first thing I would try is to reformat the one not being recognized ,only thing is hopefully its empty ,oh and have you tried on other PC's cause I guess thats the only way to reformat

[Paul Dumm]

Yes, I tryed it on my laptop and it works. do not have anything on it so I will reformat it and then try it on the desktop.

[cpasley]

Let me know how that goes ,Paul