Hard drive problem

[flyboy747]

One of my friends called me tonight and said that he had turned on his computer (one I built for him from the specs he wanted) and the hard drive (20 gb Western Digital) would not boot to Windows or anything, it would only click. He said it sounded like it was the sound it makes when you first turn it on or something. I don't know because I haven't actually been able to get over there and see what it's doing.

It's been doing stuff like this the whole time I was working on it, and some of the time he's had it. What it does, sometimes, not all of the time, is you'll be doing whatever on it, and then if you just barely touch the case and kind of move it or whatever, the hard drive will sound like it starts to spin down, but then comes back up. It also especially does it if you just barely touch the cable from the HD to the MB. At first I thought it was a bad cable, so just the other day when I finally got time to, I tried it with a different cable....it still does the exact same thing. I know it's not a hard drive problem because I put the hard drive in my computer, and it worked perfectly fine for an hour or longer. But you put it back in his system, and it starts doing this.

I am also wondering if it is a motherboard problem. I have contacted the motherboard manufacturer (SOYO) via e-mail, but have not received a response yet.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you so much in advance for any help.

By the way, the specs are:
Athlon 1 GHz, SOYO K7VTA MB, 20 gb Western Digital hard drive

[SB]

Sounds like a short in the psu connector to me

[ScooterWad]

Try plugging the HDD into the secondary IDE. May have an IDE controller problem. I had the same problem posted this week. I ended up running both the HDD and CDRom from the secondary IDE, worked fine. Make sure you set HDD jumper for master and CD for slave.

[Rkring1]

I agree w/ ShawnMt , sounds like a bad power supply connection , possibly a "cold" solder joint.Try connecting it to one of the other power leads from the power supply , or try a different power supply.I have found power supplys w/ bad solder joints causing this type of problem ,you can resolder the connections , but be careful of the capacitors in these ...they will bite you real bad !!!