Somewhat OT - can underpowered power supplies damage a system?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday, August 18, 2010 01:28:56 pm Thomas Cameron did opine:

[...]
 
> Thanks, Gene, much appreciated.  I've upgraded to 500w PSUs.  Do you
> think I did any damage to the system components?

That remains to be detected.  Depending on how the drive runs its servo's, 
poor power could mean poor head placement occasionally, resulting in what 
would basically be formatting errors.  Sometimes an fsck might find/fix them, 
but there is always the possibility that a reformat using the factories 
setup tools might also be required.  We can't do that as the tools aren't 
available.

Subtly mixed in with this might be a longer than normal spinup time at 
powerup, leading to higher head wear in the first turn or two of the spinup, 
something a nice stiff supply wouldn't cause near as much of as the disk 
would reach head flying speed quicker.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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