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question about freezing and HDD damage

S

squall0110

n00b
Joined
Nov 27, 2004
Messages
16
hi, my computer has been freezing on me ALOT because of a faulty PSU.
the computer actually freezes, my question is...
because the computer froze, and im forced to do a hard reboot, will there be damage to the HDD?
i figure since it froze, the drives won't be spinning? (or am i totally off?), and a hard reboot won't damage it (at least not too badly?)
after i get my new psu is there something i can do to ensure my HDDs are healthy?
 
A bad PSU which causes a freeze can also cause the death of a hard drive and/or the destruction of its contents. I would be very careful about this. The hard disk is a delicate mechanism and it being shut off while doing something can make it very unhappy....
 
freezing doesnt necessarily mean the HDD has spun down
(its more common that its an IRQ storm under normal circumstances)
actual power loss to the HDD is better than what a faulty PSU can do to it however
undershoots or power downs will corrupt the cache and data if it happens during a write, but likely cause no physical damage, the armeture will park even durng a power down

but a PSU overshooting the 5% reference voltage (+12V rail primarily) can fry suff
unlike the mobo there is no buffer, on a mobo there is the Voltage Regulation Modual that will likely take a bullet for the ICs on the RAM or the CPU

which is why mobos, Video Cards with Auxillary Power connectors and HDDs tend to fry more often
RAM fries alot as well, but its also more likely to be damaged from ESD event during installation, a good VRM should protect it once installed, but by that point it might already be degraded

you can run a diagnostic, that will check the platter integrity
and SMART monitoring will compare certain physical parameters over a period of time
but there is no way to examine the integrity of an IC (Integrated circuit)

review the ESD & Electromigration Rant
 
that worries me =T
but thanks for the replies
i'll see what happens to everything once i get new psu in today =T
thanks again
 
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