just when you think you have seen it all --

Peripherals, parts, data storage...
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jaybird
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Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2002 9:21 pm

just when you think you have seen it all --

Post by jaybird »

About a week ago it seemed as if I had a hdd on the way out, random reboots, freezes, clicking from the drive, while in boot-up and in hppt screen would not see second drive and go to "boot disk failure, inset system boot disk", etc.

So I went to compUSA, bought a new 40gig drive and prepared to install it. I had removed all cards except vid card and was removing old primary drive when I noticed what seemed to be a wire thin piece of "plastic" (about 2 inches long) stretched across several of the connector pins on the under side of the drive. Just for "grinns" I turned on the power and watched thr "plastic" become "magnatized" and shot out across several connector pins!

When I ran a conductivity test on the "platic" it passed a current!

Removed "plastic", reinstalled all hardware, all is well!

Go figure :roll: !

Watch them open cases, never know what will crawel inside!

Regards,

jaybird
Derek
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Post by Derek »

So what did you do with the new hard drive? And how come you only bought a 40gig drive!? :D
-Derek
jaybird
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Post by jaybird »

Well, lets' see, biggest reason it was on sale and was still twice the size of my original 20 gig WD unit.

I use two drives, 20 gig for dual OS's and 60 gig for video editing and strorage.

I was thinking about taking it back, however, I could slave it off the 20 gig and use it just for capture and that would free up the entire 60 gig unit for editing and authoring.

My question is should I just slave it off the 20 gig or should I use RAID?
and if I do, should I attempt WIN2K Pro software RAID?

I've heard that it works well, is easy to do but you take more of a "hit" on the CPU's than if you use hardware raid.

Thoughts or ideas anyone?

Regards,

jaybird

dual 366's @ 572
768 PC133 SDRAM

OBTW, trying to breath life back into my V.40 board, upon closer look I found cold and loose solder joints on the EC10. Also very strange, when I removed EC10 to clean up holes and resolder I found a SECOND hole on the "-" side of the EC10 mounting holes in the board? Very strange!
purrkur
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Post by purrkur »

jaybird wrote:My question is should I just slave it off the 20 gig or should I use RAID?
I assume you are talking about striping (RAID 0). If that is the case then you can only use the capacity on both drives that is the same as the capacity of the smaller drive. You will also double your chances of messing up your system in a disk crash since your RAID container will break completely if one of the drives break. Also, I am not sure about the performance increase you get from striped disks when storing many small files which is what the OS consists of. I haven't tried this myself but I would think that it is a bad idea. Striping disks is a good idea when you mess around with video editing that create large files and so on.
jaybird wrote:and if I do, should I attempt WIN2K Pro software RAID?
Why not? I have seen tests where Linux software RAID beats expensive hardware RAID kits. I have also seen recommendations on not using certain hardware RAID kits at all, but instead setting up the disks as independent drives for Linux to tie into a RAID configuration. I have no idea about Windows Software RAID thoughh. Linux software RAID is well documented and tested on several different places around the web.
jaybird wrote:I've heard that it works well, is easy to do but you take more of a "hit" on the CPU's than if you use hardware raid.
Don't read too much into that. If you are using DMA then running two disks separately won't take much more CPU than running those two disks in a striped configuration. In Linux anyway. I can't be bothered with Windows :)

jaybird wrote:OBTW, trying to breath life back into my V.40 board, upon closer look I found cold and loose solder joints on the EC10. Also very strange, when I removed EC10 to clean up holes and resolder I found a SECOND hole on the "-" side of the EC10 mounting holes in the board? Very strange!
Not strange at all. This is because the manufacturer wanted to specify two different caps that had a difference in length between the two wires. It is pretty common practice to safeguard yourself if you think running one specific cap (or any other component for that matter) might give you trouble down the road.
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
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Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
jaybird
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As long as I have your "ear" ---

Post by jaybird »

I am having a problem installing my Seagate 40 gig drive in a win2k system.

I want my "new" Seagate 40 gig ata 7200 rpm drive to provide extra storage (slaved off the main 20 gig WD drive).

Now, this is strange but, slaved or set up as a single drive on a single channel, when I try to boot into win2k the system sees the drive, goes to windows and hangs half-way through load.

However, when booting into win98se, no problems, identifies the drive, loads windows and allows me to format the drive using the Seagate EZ Drive Installation software.

I thought that once done I might be able to boot into 2000, no such luck!

I have tried every possible combination of jumpers, cables and different IDE channels and cannot get drive to function in win2k. In every case, sees drive in hpt366, starts to load win2k and hanges half way through.

Seagate says it is a BIOS issue and that I need a new motherboard, if that is true then why do my ata66 WD 7200 rpm drive and my Maxtor ata100 7200 rpm drive function perfectly and why does it work in 98se and not 2000 pro?

Any ideas anyone?

Regards,

jaybird
purrkur
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Post by purrkur »

Yeah, try running it off of the regular IDE and not the HPT366...
2x533MHz@544MHz, 2.0V
640MB PC100 memory
Realtek RTL-8139 NIC
Maxtor 6Y080L0 80GB hdd
Debian Linux stable with 2.4.8 kernel
jaybird
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Post by jaybird »

I did, and it still doesn't work in win2k, only in win98se.
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

Just a shot in the dark here(and you no doubt already tried it).
In a situation like that I would disconnect all drives but the target(set as single on IDE1) and the floppy. I boot into dos6.2 or win98 on the floppy and fdisk the 40gig to delete all the partitions. Do a power off for a few seconds and reboot and look at the WD400 with fdisk again to make sure it "took."

Then configure the drives mechanicly and boot into Win2K and use Windows diskmanager in the adminstrative tools to set up the new disk.

I had a Coner drive once that I couldn't get to work right until I got the EZ-Store(or some variant) software off of it. Wow that was back in theold days when there was a 510Meg limit and I was installing a used1.2gig.
There are *almost* no bad BP6s. There are mostly bad caps.

No BP6s remaining
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Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

got o safe mode
computer management

check the device manager to see your IDE controllers are listed fine
then disk management
you will prolly have to right click the 'new' drive to write some address to it b4 win2k will see it
jaybird
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win2k and new hdd conflict

Post by jaybird »

Nope, won't even let me get into safe mode with drive connected through any ide port while trying to access win2k!

Here is what I see on the screen when trying to get into safe mode:

multi (0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)winnt\system32\drivers\iomdisk.sys

This is where it hangs, hdd light on solid and dim.

I'll try to find out what this driver does.

Regards,

jaybird
Dave Rave
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Post by Dave Rave »

iomega ?
heaps of google entries
mostly probs
davd_bob
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Post by davd_bob »

Um, gosh. Maybe the system is confused and thinks you added, and now want to boot from a zip drive.
24seven
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Post by 24seven »

Boot into windows normaly and do as Dave said, goto the diskmanagement section in computer management.

See if the drive is listed there.
LunaticFrige
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Joined: Sun Mar 28, 2004 3:31 pm

Post by LunaticFrige »

Had similair prob, turned out to be the drivers.
See if this set works well for you: http://www.bp6.com/board/dload.php?acti ... file_id=25
or
http://www.motherboards.org/files/drive ... 2k_125.zip
jaybird
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Post by jaybird »

Finally got things straight! Turned out to be the "old" drive (20 gig wd), the one that was shorted out Via the "plastic" wire (what ever the he-- it was) finally failed.

Installed new 40 gig SeaGate on IDE 3, hppt366, 1.22 BIOS, 128b drivers and away we go!

OBTW, just found a 1.1 (1100E) in AUS, will now have 2 good PIII's and so far my "original" V1.0, R.40 board is responding to repairs.

Who knows, maybe PIII "Johnny 5" will rise from the ashes and goto "warp 9" once again!

Oh well, only time will tell :)

Regards,

jaybird

NEVER SAY DIE :wink:
LunaticFrige
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Post by LunaticFrige »

fwiw, those 1.28b drivers gave me slow drive performance, about 1/3 that of the faster 1.25 set
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