Replacing HDD but also suspect PSU

Hi everyone,

 

This is my first time on a forum, so apologies if I should have joined an existing discussion rather than starting a new topic.

 

I have a 5000BP (6.y.o) that recently had its HDD die. I tried installing the dead HDD into a PC to make sure that it wasn't the Toppy, but the drive is definitely dead. Next, I swapped in an old IDE drive I had from a spare PC to test the Toppy and it is working fine, though very noisy (and only 40Gb).

 

I've read quite a few of the forums both here and in UK to choose a replacement HDD, ending up with a WD10EVDS (1Tb, SATA, AV rated) and a IDE/SATA adapter from DealExtreme. I've done the mods to the HDD mounting chasis and it all fits nicely, but when I power up it won't recognise the HDD. The HDD spins up for a few seconds then falters and spins up again, over and over. I did read the posts about the old capacitors in the PSU causing problems with HDD, but the end caps didn't appear to be bulging as described, so I hoped they were OK. I have now sourced a (cheap) multimeter and tested the voltages as follows:

38V -> 36V

22V -> 28.4V

17V -> 19.8V

8V -> 8.7V

5V -> 4.6V

3.3V -> 3.2V

15V -> 18.2V

12v -> 14V        ... I guess these are way out of tolerance and I need to replace the caps?

 

Does anyone have any comments given the symptoms above before I start replacing caps?

Also does anyone know a good shop in Brisbane to source the caps? I've read the ones from Jaycar are cheap crap?

 

Thanks heaps...

 

Regards,

 

GeoffW