230 killed my Hard Drive?

[Hondo]

ok been having no end of problems setting up this new system. I have had no less than 3 brand new hard drives go bad in less than a day or so of operations. System is a xp 2200 @ 1950 195X10 @ 1.85 volts on an epox 8k5a3+ running windows xp pro with all the newest drivers and patches. Geforce 4 4200ti, santa cruz sound and 256 mb pc 3200.

Its the been the same story now 3 times in a row. Format install xp update with all drivers and patches and everything is good. Then after a few hours the hard drive starts randomly clicking and freezing up . Gets progressively worse and eventually drive is dead. Once, ok, twice maybe but the third time no way. Something is killing these drives. All were brand new. Maxtor, Western Digital and Seagate. All were ata 100 or 133 and 7200 rpm and running on the primary ide channel if that makes any difference.

The only thing i can imagine is something i just noticed today, somehow, I think one of my kids helped with this one, my power supply got switched over from 115 to 230. Could this contribuite to the early demise of these drives or is there something else going on out there.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

[JimmyG]

It is very unpredictable what the result of switching from 115 to 230. The power supply will attempt to provide the correct output voltage, but since the input voltage is now half of what it expects, it will probably not be able to provide as much current or the output voltages will be unstable. All of this can lead to erratic behavior of anything in your computer. Also, it can lead to stress on electro-mechanical components and resultant failure. I think you are lucky that the hard drive was the only casualty.

 

[Daemonfly]

They may not be "dead".

Go to the Hard drive maker's website and download their "low level format" utility and run it per instructions. They could have just got corrupted to hell.

 

[SlowBurn]

Just out of curiosity, with your FSB at 195, are you using the 1/5 divider?