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Hard drives problems caused by UPS?

M

mentok1982

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Sep 17, 2004
Messages
4,385
I have a 60gb Maxtor EIDE and a 120gb Western Digital EIDE hard drive.
My UPS is an APC 540 Watts 900VA model number bx900.

After the purchase of my first UPS I have been getting blue screen errors that require me to restart my
machine. The last time that happened when it started up again all the data on partition 1 of my WD was
gone and Windows said it was not formated. That was not a big deal though because that was my
music partition and I have all my music backed up onto my MP3 player.

Usually about 5 times a day my UPS will take over and run off the battery for 5 seconds at random intervals.
I assume this is because it is not detecting enough power from the outlet and my dad thinks it happens
when the air conditioning turns on.

I have ordered a new 250gb WD SATAII hard drive and I will be transfering all my data from the old WD to it.

Question time!

Could these blue screens and my hard drive failure be caused by my UPS switching between battery
and AC all the time?

If so is there any thing I can do about it?

Should I replace both of my current drives with my new SATAII drive?

EDIT!

I just went into the configuration for my UPS and the sensitivity was set to medium.
I have changed it low and we shall see how that works out for the rest of today/tomorrow.
My new drive will arrive in 5-7 days (slow free shipping).
 
Two possibilities:

1. Your UPS is a square wave type, this is different from what the utility outlet provides. However I have never seen/heard a computer power supply that has ever had a problem with the square wave! Computer power supplies are switching types, they "should not" have a problem with this.

2. Maybe your new UPS is unusually show at switching? Defective? Or possibility your power supply is defective and unusually sensitive?

I have a SmartUPS 3000. My utility power is fairly crappy and it switches to UPS power probably 5 to sometimes maybe 20 times per day! I have mine set to sensitive.

I would first try disconnecting the UPS and see if the problem goes away.
 
One More!

3. Maybe the UPS software is causing the BSOD? Check the system logs as well.
 
My WD hard drive is definitely bad. It is making clicking noises and when I went to open up my 2nd
and 3rd partitions on it they were gone, until I restarted my PC.

I have unplugged the WD from my PC and I will connect my new SATAII drive when it arrives.
SInce I have set my UPS control panel to low sensitivity it has not switched to battery power...yet.

So now this is the most important question:


Should I replace both of my current drives with my new SATAII drive?

If I keep my current Maxtor installed I will not have to reinstall Windows and all my programs.
Is it possible to use one EIDE drive and one SATA drive?
 
You shouldn't run into any problems using one IDE and one SATA drive. If you do run into a problem, the problem is likely that your bios requires the boot device (the one with the os on it in most cases) to be the IDE drive. I had a motherboard that I couldn't for the life of me get to boot from the SATA drive if I added an IDE drive. This should not happen, but if it does then there isn't much you can do other than wait for a bios update.
 
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