fried hard drive

[nickejoe]

Just installed a maxtor 200gig hard drive. Got it up and running for a day and transfered lots & lots & lots files to it. It is a third drive, so I installed it with a sabrent pci controler card. Also have 2 cd-dvd player\burners. computer is a Dell 8200 p4 w/250w power supply. Have an gforce 4600 nvidia video card w/on board fan. Because the card produced so much heat I installed a cpu fan and another fan on the case to bring in air. When I installed the new maxtor there was not enough power plugs to run all. I unpluged the case fan so I could give power to the new drive. All went well until I installed a y connector and hooked up the fan. About 60 seconds and the comp shut down and a burning smell filled air. An inspection of the hard drive showed a black/burned/smelly spot on the drive circuit board.
Question 1: (most important) I have seen info about data recovery by changing the circuit board and have ordered a identical drive form same supplier. Any helpfull comments regarding the data recovery & circuit board repair?
Question 2: Was hooking up the case fan the cause of the hard drive failure or was it just a coincidence? (need the case fan but don't want to fry a new drive) Any thoughts?

[G Ray88]

Welcome to Sysopt!
It sounds like you need a larger PSU check here: http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/
Not sure if connecting a fan would cause the HD to die, I would first check with Maxtor about your HD, then for the data recovery I would check a www.ontrack.com
Good Luck:)

[gringo]

You could try disconnecting as many drives, cd-rom fans etc to see if the HDD is definitelty fried. It sounds like it, but you never know.

As G Ray88 says, you PSU is definitely not powerful enough, but by disconnecting some things, you should get it up and running to do a check.


:t

[lptech]

nickejoe-

Your main problem is probably caused by an inadequate PSU(power supply unit). To put it politely, you've got your power supply overloaded! Dell computers were designed to run with what came with it and from what you've added on, I'm not surprised that it is acting up that way!

250-watts of output power is just way to little to run all that additional hardware that you've installed and is probably overtaxing your PSU. My suggestion is to replace the PSU with at least a 350-watt PSU or higher.

LPTECH

[nickejoe]

Got on the Dell forum and found that Dell PS are ATX standard, but most PS will not fit w/o case mods. Found an 425w PS made for Dell boxes @ http://pcpowercooling.com/. Cost more $ but no mods. Got the HD today and will have the PS on friday. Thought I would wait until I install the PS before taking on the HD. Any Ideas on the PS install?
Also think I will Transfer the OS and programs that are on my "c" drive to a new larger drive so I can eliminate the third HD. Any ideas on the transfer?