Just tracked down an obscure problem.

[hutch--]

My XP dev box has had a problem with its last 2 disks, effectively wrecked a match pair of 1tb disks and was starting to do the same thing with the replacement pair of 500 gig disks. The effect was unusual, ran fine for a while and temperature was 31c so that was not a problem but after a while the disk lights were flashing on and off and it locked the machine up after a while. It seemed like they were hunting each other.

The last 2 disks were in removable cases so I could move data from one machine to another. The board seemed to be OK so I removed the disks from the removable cases and pluged them directly into the board and BINGO, the problem seems to have gone away.

Now I wonder, has anyone else ever had problems with removable disk cases ?

[dedndave]

i have never owned removable cases
but, if i had this problem, i would check cables first

assuming you have already done that - check the supply voltages with a decent meter
in the "theoretical" rules of troubleshooting circuitry, this is supposed to be the first thing to check
in practice, it is usually third or forth   :bg

Code Select Expand

Voltage Rail      Tolerance      Minimum Voltage      Maximum Voltage
  +3.3VDC           ± 5%           +3.135 VDC           +3.465 VDC
  +5VDC             ± 5%           +4.750 VDC           +5.250 VDC
  +5VSB             ± 5%           +4.750 VDC           +5.250 VDC
  -5VDC             ± 10%          -4.500 VDC           -5.500 VDC
  +12VDC            ± 5%          +11.400 VDC          +12.600 VDC
  -12VDC            ± 10%         -10.800 VDC          -13.200 VDC

i believe "regular" drives run on +5VDC and +12VDC
the new-fangled laptop drives may be different

[Bill Cravener]

The last 2 disks were in removable cases so I could move data from one machine to another.

You mean like a portable drive Steve? I use a portable drive to do company backups that are then taken off site. It uses a USB port and draws power thru the m-board via onboard USB, where as internal drives are connected directly to the power supply box and a SATA connection. How do your removables connect to a box? Are we talking about the same thing?

[dedndave]

Hutch,
do you have a make and model on these cases so we can see what they entail ?

come to think of it, i do have a couple old drives like this - 1 Gb each - that's how old they are   :P
they have a handle on the front that unlocks them from the carriage
never had a problem with them, other than they are too small
i guess i could make use of them - sort of a replacement for floppies   :bg

[vanjast]

AFAIK those removable disks have those connector slots.
If you can touch the connector directly (power off of course although 12VDC is no big deal) to feel it's temperature - if it's too warm/hot (it should be cool or ambient) you might have a connector problem, which will result in power/data problems.

:8)

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   I mentioned my problems with removable hard drives in another
posting.  Some seating problems.  One drive went bad.

Steve

[hutch--]

The cases are unbranded so they are probably Chinese cheapies. These were the first two I tried and they seemed to perform OK so I bought another 6 as I have enough boxes to use them. The disk in a small case slides in from the front and the connectors inside look fine. The standard SATA power and signal attach at the back of the outer case and there is a small circuit board coming off the power input that goes to a switch on the front of the outer case so you can turn the disk on and off. The case has an exhaust fan under the disk and the disks used to run at about the same temperature as the fixed ones in front of a 5 inch fan so cooling was not the problem.

They ran fine for about 6 months but just recently they started to flicker the data transfer lights on and off alternately between them and it looked like a race condition of some type. It eventually stuffed 2 1tb disks so I replaced them with the earlier pair of 500 gig disks and it started to do the same thing. I re-tested the disks in another box and they performed correctly so the last effort was to attach the disks directly to the board bypassing the circuit board in the outer case and it stopped the lockups and the disks work correctly.

As best as I can work out something failed in the small circuit board inside the outer case and even though the disk temperature was stable, it would appear that a component in the small circuit board was failing over time. I am back to setting up 4 disks behind a 5 inch fan as they run cold.

Its unfortunate as the basic architecture of a box can be laid out differently with removable disks and it makes it far easier to move around very large quantities of data as you can swap disks and use direct SATA to SATA data transfer. When I have had to do large backups this has saved me many hours of hanging around waiting for the data copy to finish. Seems the most reliable way to backup data is still to have a working box connected to a network and go make a cup of coffee while its transferring the data. I have a USB/SATA external gadget which is a disk docking station but I either have to piss around with an ESATA cable of put up with the much slower USB2 data transfer rate.

[dedndave]

well - i have to go with Van
the connectors are probably tired

cables, connectors, switches, fans - mechanical compnents - will generally fail before an IC will
this is especially true if you "use" them a lot

it's a shame they don't make that kind of stuff like they did back in the 40's   :P
switch and connector contacts would be good spring steel, nickel plated
now, they make it as cheaply as they possibly can

[jcfuller]

I had a failure with a 500GB Lacie NAS recently.
Just for kicks before I trashed it I opened the sealed case(ground off the fatener heads as I did not have the correct tool), removed the drive and put it in an external NextStar3 USB case.
Windows saw the disk but would not / could not read it.
I then plugged it into a Ubuntu box and it found all the partitions and all the files.

James

[hutch--]

James, I have seen in the past that a disk formatted to Linux format which is probably what the Lacie disk had internally can be seen as a disk but not read by Windows. If it was Windows data on the disk, it could probably be mounted on a Linux box then read using a Samba server by a Windows box over a network. Depends what is on it as to whether you would bother.

[jcfuller]

I got a new NAS (Synology) and transferred "that which was useful" as opposed to just crap (I save everything) to it.
I still have the LaCie drive attached to the Linux Box just in case I might need some obscure piece of code.
James

[sinsi]

Get yourself a usb3-sata adapter (possibly a usb3 card for that orphaned pcie 1x slot), plugnplay unlike e-sata.
Faster too, according to my setup. I now have about 4TB of storage running through 3 usb3 interfaces, get around 120MB/s read, 80 write.
Better than the onboard sata3.

Hutch, are you talking about the old 'caddy'?

[hutch--]

Sinsi,

Sounds like a good idea but I rarely use USB and don't have any of the newer fast stuff. My i7 has a pair of USB3 ports that I have not yet used. I just added a pair of 6gig interface disks to the i7 and they are clocking just under 130 meg/sec with HDTUNE.

The cases were modern ones for SATA2 series disks, worked fine for about 6 months then I started getting unusual disk activity with the lights flickering. Stuffed 2 x 1tb disks. Plugged in the disks directly to the board and the problem disappeared. It seemed to be the outer cases with the electronic board and switch that was the problem, tried the disks in the inner cases on another box and it worked fine.

[daydreamer]

I now have about 4TB of storage running...

you gonna use that for a movie marathon about 1000 DVDs?

[sinsi]

I now have about 4TB of storage running...

you gonna use that for a movie marathon about 1000 DVDs?

Customer HDD images, although I can imagine 1000 (illegal) DVDs being there  :lol