Topic: Mobile rack problems.....

[Centurus]

Hey all.  This is a post I made on another forum.  Since I don't wanna retype everything, I'll do a cut and paste.  If anyone knows of what's going on, please let me know. 

Hi all. This is my first time posting, so if this post is in the wrong place, please forgive me. I read the rules and all relevent threads, so I'm pretty sure i'm in the right place.

Anyway, on to my problem.

I recently built a brand new system, and I installed my existing mobile racks into it. Whenever I tried to boot up the hard drive, it wouldn't boot. I thought it was the mobile racks and trays, that they had gone bad, so I bought some new ones and the same problem happened. I plugged the hard drives I have one at a time straight into the new system without the mobile racks, formatted them, installed Windows, and they work fine. I my last computer, I never had these problems, and these are the same hard drives I had before. I always do a clean format when I build a brand new computer.

The new system is an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ installed on a Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G motherboard. The memory is a Kingston DDR2 PC6400 1 gig chip (getting another gig in about a month). The power supply is an Antec Trueblue 2.0 480 watt power supply. The mobile racks are SanMax InClose MDA-96I-BLK. Current operating system is Windows XP Pro w/SP2.

Also installed in the system are the following components:

Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4, Zalman CNPS9500 heatsink, EVGA nVidia 7300 GT PCI-E graphics (given as a gift but upgrading later on), Sony Dual Layer DVD burner DRU-800A, Iomega ZIP 250 ATAPI internal.

All my hard drives are Western Digital hard drives since I've never had a problem with any of their drives in the past. I currently have 3x160 gig drives, and purchased a brand new 250 gig drive. All the drives are IDE, 7200 RPM, 8mb buffers.

I use mobile racks because we have one main computer for several people in my house, so each of us having our own particular hard drive with our own programs and applications comes in handy, since there's almost no danger in one person losing someone else's data.

One thing to note though. I also have an old 80 gig and 13 gig hard drive, also western digital, and the odd thing, they work just fine in the mobile racks. I looked at the labels on the hard drives themselves, and noticed that on those drives that work, the 12VDC is labeled to around 0.45A and below, while the 160 gig drives and the 250 are labeled 0.90A.

The 160 gig hard drives always worked perfectly before with the mobile racks in my last computer system, so I can't for the life of me figure out why they're acting like this now.

Any ideas? If this isn't enough information, please let me know and I'll try and post more information. Thank you.

Oh, just in case, below is the system specs for my last system.

AMD Athlon XP 2600+
1.5 gigs of Kingston PC2700 DDR ram
380 watt Antec trueblue power supply
ECS K7VTA3 6.0 motherboard
Same hard drives and mobile racks as before.

[Javora]

If the system is able to boot when the drives are directly connected to the hard drive then I'm guessing that it is some type of Bios/configuration issue between the system and the mobile racks.  Can you give me a link to the type of mobile rack that you use so I can do a little more research?  In the mean time, check out the documentation in both the motherboard and the mobile racks and see if there is a connector or something that need to be done to get drives back in order.  One other thing you can do is take a look in Bios when you boot and see what is and is not recognized by the system.  This may help track down your issue.

[Just plain old Punisher]

Try loading failsafe defaults in the bios.

[Centurus]

No documentation ever came with any of the mobile racks.  Best I can give you is the model number and manufacturer.  The hard drives are being detected by BIOS even when inside the mobile racks, but when they're trying to boot, they just sit there.  I'll give you the link to the mobile rack manufacturer.  In the poist I copied and pasted, I listed the manufacturer and model.

http://www.sanmax.com/products/index.cgi?display=item&part=MDA-96I-B

As I said before, the mobile racks never came with documentation.  They don't require any settings or jumper settings either, since they're not like an additional connection, but more like an extension.  The only thing ever really needed are hard drive jumpers, and since I don't have 2 hard drives installed, running simultaneously, the hard drives never need jumpers.  Keep in mind, I use Western Digital drives, so if they're the only drive being used at the time, a jumper isn't needed to set it as master.

I've read the motherboard manual and look the BIOS over through death.  Can't figure out what's going on. 

Oh, one more thing.  Nothing is over clocked in my system.  I don't believe in doing such things.  I like to make sure that my components will last as long as possible.  :-D 

I do have a couple theories though, both I feel are just really stretching now, since I've been bogged down with problems from day one.

Anyway, this is what I thought up of when I was sleeping today.  If the IDE controllers on the motherboard are just dead set not to work with the mobile racks I have installed now, then I have one of two options.  I can either buy a new brand of mobile rack and see if it'll work, or I disable the IDE controllers on the motherboard, buy an IDE controller card, and see if that does the trick.

Reason I think these are crazy solutions is if it was the mobile rack brand, then why did my old 13 gig and 80 gig work without problems while my 160 gig drives and new 250 gig drive work, and if it's a problem with the onboard IDE controller, then why are my hard drives booting up and operating normally when connected straight to the motherboard.

Any other info anyone needs?  I'm more than willing to give it.

[Sirgod]

Before going to all that expense, Is your Bios the most recent? I know Flashing your Bios can be scary, but most MB makers, do it pretty easily now, almost completly automated.

The other thing you might try, is systamticly adding drives to the rack one at a time. It might be a faulty Drive, and IF so, for some reason, It might be locking up the Rack=PC connection.

Stephen

[Centurus]

The BIOS version on the board was F5 when I finally got the system running.  The one main problem I had in trying to get the computer running, with any hard drive no matter how it was plugged in, was the damned memory chips I was using.  Turns out a bunch of other people had the same problem with the same brand of chips.  FYI, OCZ are not good memory.  Bought a gig of Kingston memory and within a day got a fully working drive up and running, and I flashed my BIOS.  I've updated BIOS versions before and never had a problem.  Current BIOS version now is F6.

As I said before, my 13 gig and 80 gig work fine in the mobile racks, but for some reason my 160 gigs and a brand new 250 gig won't.  The 160 gigs and 250 gig work without a problem when plugged directly to the motherboard.  This is my problem.  I can't figure out why.  My drives themselves are working perfectly.

[Centurus]

P.S.

To everyone that's tried to help me so far, +1.

[Nemesis]

As I said before, my 13 gig and 80 gig work fine in the mobile racks, but for some reason my 160 gigs and a brand new 250 gig won't.  The 160 gigs and 250 gig work without a problem when plugged directly to the motherboard.  This is my problem.  I can't figure out why.  My drives themselves are working perfectly.

I'm assuming that the drives are all Parallel ATA not SATA.  When you plug them directly into the motherboard are you using the same (data) cable as connects to the racks?  If not then you could have a master slave conflict with the DVD or the Zip drive. 

Do the HDs use the same power connection when plugged directly in as they do when in the rack?

Is your BIOS set to autodetect the HD each time or has it set itself the first time the rack was connected for the drive that was in it then?   

Just some guessing as I've never used the removable racks.

[Centurus]

As I said before, my 13 gig and 80 gig work fine in the mobile racks, but for some reason my 160 gigs and a brand new 250 gig won't.  The 160 gigs and 250 gig work without a problem when plugged directly to the motherboard.  This is my problem.  I can't figure out why.  My drives themselves are working perfectly.

I'm assuming that the drives are all Parallel ATA not SATA.  When you plug them directly into the motherboard are you using the same (data) cable as connects to the racks?  If not then you could have a master slave conflict with the DVD or the Zip drive. 

Do the HDs use the same power connection when plugged directly in as they do when in the rack?

Is your BIOS set to autodetect the HD each time or has it set itself the first time the rack was connected for the drive that was in it then?   

Just some guessing as I've never used the removable racks.

Yep, all IDE drives.  Haven't tackled SATAs yet.  I've swapped the data cables on both the first IDE channel and second IDE channel several times, even switching them around, so the cables aren't the problem.  I keep hard drives and CD/DVD rom drives on separate channels, with hard drives always being on the first IDE channel, so there would never be any conflict. 

As for the power connections, yes, they use the exact same ones when connected directly as when connected via mobile racks, and yes, my BIOS is set for auto detect.  Saves me headaches.  That's the first thing I check for when I build a new system.

In the past I've never had problems with mobile racks.  When problems would occur, it was due to a moble rack bay going back, so replacing the bay solved the problem.  In this case, I've used my old bays and trays, and new ones.  Nothing. 

[Sirgod]

It goes without saying your using XP right? I know that win 98 had problems with large drives.

Damn, I wish you lived closer, this looks like the kind of tech problem, I'd love to dig my hands into.

Stephen

[Dracho]

Sometimes those things require the drive to be set to "cable select", even if there is only one drive.  If the drive is set to master it might not work on some models.

[Centurus]

I haven't tried cable select for the larger drives.  Never occured to me.  I'll give it a shot and see if it works.  Here's hoping.

[Centurus]

Just tried using the cable select jumper settings on several drives.  No dice.  :-(

Earlier tonight I installed an ATA controller card and tried using that instead of the onboard IDE controller.  Nothing.  In fact, no matter how the card is configured and no matter how the hard drives are installed, they always crash.

There are only 3 other avenues of actions that I can think of that I have left.  One, replace the mobile racks with a different brand and model.  Two, replace the motherboard, which really isn't an option since this is the 4th board I'm on, but that's because I didn't find out till recently that the OCZ brand memory I had before was causing my problems.  Third and last, start using a different brand of hard drive. 

For now I'm just gonna manually swap the hard drives in and out till I can find the reason for this mobile rack problem.

If anyone can think of anything, please let me know.

If anyone needs my system info again, here it is, but a brief review:

Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G, socket AM2.
Kingston PC6400 DDR2, 1 gig, single channel
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+
Antec 480watt Trueblue 2.0
Various western digital IDE hard drives, Caviar and Caviar SE; 3x160 gig hard drives, 1x250 gig hard drive (brand new, purchased in the past 24 hours).

The mobile racks are SanMax InClose MDA-96I-BLK.

An old 13 gig Western Digital and an 80 gig Western Digital, for some reason, work flawlessly in the mobile racks.  My other hard drives need to be connected directly to the computer in order to work properly.

[Dracho]

Any chance the power supply for this rig isn't putting out like it should?  If it's a few volts short you could be seeing this kind of problem.  Are the two old drives that do work 5600 RPM's and the new ones fast drives?  That leads me down the power path still.


Although... m y wife's system is a Gygabyte 939 AMD system and the IDE 2 channel just quit woirking.. just quit..

Though you said you've tried different boards.

[Javora]

Dracho has a good point, what is the Wattage on your power supply?  If it is below 450~480 than I would look into buying a new power supply.

[Centurus]

The 13 gig is I think 5400 RPM, and the 80 gig I know is 7200 RPM.  I thought about the power supply, but if it wasn't putting out the power it's supposed to, then why would the larger hard drives operate normally when plugged directly into the motherboard?

When in the mobile racks, there's power going through, but for some reason either the motherboard doesn't want to accept the data transfer through the mobile rack, or the mobile rack can't transfer the data fast enough to the motherboard's liking.

I could get my PSU checked I suppose.  I tried tonight a SATA mobile rack, just to see if it would work, but nothing.  Then again the SATA didn't want to work even when plugged directly to the motherboard.  So maybe either the PSU is faulty, or the mobo is screwed.

If no one minds reading a long post, I'll write my endeavour to build a new system.

Started out back during the summer.  I bought a Gigabyte board, same model as I have now.  Got a 3800+ single core AM2 processor, and 2 gigs of OCZ memory.  When I finally got the PSU, case, and a couple other things, I slapped the computer together, but the system would crash on it's own, sometimes as soon as it booted.  I double checked every single connection for nearly 2 days, and found nothing wrong.  I concluded the board was bad.  Returned it and got another one, but I had another problem with that one.  The Windows setup always hung up, no matter what I was doing.  Even plugging the hard drive straight to the motherboard wasn't working.  Turns out that with this second board, the problem was more than likely the OCZ memory, pure junk if you ask me, but I didn't know it at the time.  So, I returned the whole works, got my money back, and left.

Couple weeks later, I buy an ASUS board, another 2 gigs of OCZ memory (at this time I still didn't know the brand was sh*t, and I had returned the last 2 gigs I had), got a 3500+ processor, and attempted another build of the system.  Sure enough, wouldn't work.  Couldn't figure out why.  Spent a whole weekend and part of the following week looking over every single connection, every single component, and nothing.  When I managed to get Windows setup finished, it would crash, and one time it gave an error that the BIOS wasn't ACPI compliant.  Figured it was a bad BIOS.  Returned the board and processor, got an advertised mobo/processor combo, and installed it.

The board and processor I have now is that mobo/processor combo.  240 bucks for a dual core AM2 with a motherboard.  That's a steal.  I had the same problems as before, where I couldn't get Windows to even install, and where it would hang, even when the hard drive was plugged directly into the motherboard.  I did some digging around, researching the models of the hardware I had installed, and came across customer reviews with problems similar to my own, regarding the brand of memory.  It was then that I concluded the brand of memory was bad.  I returned it, bought a gig of Kingston, which I should have done in the first place, and now I've got Windows installed on several hard drives. 

Only problem now, my mobile racks don't work with my larger drives.  I suppose it could be the PSU, but I don't know how.  It's a 480 watt Antec.  Never had problems with Antec supplies in the past.  Dished out the power I demanded of it, and had other swear by them in times where power wasn't stable.  But then again at this point, I'm willing to re-examine every component.  I already know my IDE cables, mobile racks, and hard drives are working fine.  The memory is working fine.  Graphics, working fine.  My soundcard is working fine.  So it's either the motherboard, not wanting to work with mobile racks, or the PSU is faulty. 

I suppose the mobile rack would need to pull more juice from the connection than the hard drive would because of the power needed to run the fan to cool the hard drive.  The thought has crossed my mind, especially since when I looked at the hard drive labels, it says 12VDC IS .90A for my 160 gig hard drives and 250 gig hard drives, and the 13 and 80 gig hard drives are .45A and under.  I know my 160 gig drives work with the mobile racks because I had these same mobile racks and hard drives in my last system, and that PSU was only a 350watt Antec, and I know that PSU is still good and going strong.

Dracho, something you just said triggered off in my mind just now, about your wife's board.  I tried installing a SATA drive tonight, because I want to learn how to set up SATA drives.  I followed all the instructions to the letter that both the motherboard manual and hard drive manual told me to do, and when Windows had finished formatting the drive, during the file copy process, it crashed.  Didn't do anything.  This hard drive was plugged directly to the system.  I also tried using a mobile rack for it.  I think I mention this earlier in the post.

Does anyone think that maybe, just maybe, the motherboard brand, Gigabyte, isn't all that good, and maybe the board is the problem when it comes to getting my mobile racks working?  I know there's power going to the mobile racks, but for some reason, data doesn't want to be transmitted.  So I don't know if it's my motherboard or my PSU is faulty. 

If you guys had to guess, which would it be?

[Dracho]

Gigabyte boards are considered fairly stable.  You could have a bad one, but...I bought a Lan Party board for my last PC, but I don't think I'll go there again.  It's more of a tweakers board and there are just way too many bios settings, and it does not have a parallel port.

480 Watt power supply is not as much as you think.  You're running a dual core processor, a graphics card with a fan, no doubt, a dvd drive, and all your misc. stuff.  I'd like to see a minumum of 600 watts in a system like that. 

In your shoes I'd take the drive array with the big drives and hook it to a friend's PC.  Or, a cheaper alternative would be to just buy a big power supply and keep your current as a back-up. Your system sounds underpowered to me, even withour the array.   Hrm... here is how I would troubleshoot this, from cheapest to most expensive.

#1 Check all bios settings related to the HDD controllers.

#2 Remove everything from the PC except the video card and drive array

#3 Ensure the CD or DVD isn't on the same channel as the array.

#4 - Take the array to another computer and verify it works

#5 - Disable the APTI power management features inthe BIOS.  Sometimes it causes cause problems..

#6 - Disable the onboard drive controllers and try running it from a EIDE controller expansion card (that'll tell if it's the board"

#7 Upgrade the power supply if the array has functioned with a bare minimum or pull on your PS (i.e. when stripped)

#8 Change the motherboard for a different brand

[Javora]

The 13 gig is I think 5400 RPM, and the 80 gig I know is 7200 RPM.  I thought about the power supply, but if it wasn't putting out the power it's supposed to, then why would the larger hard drives operate normally when plugged directly into the motherboard?

When in the mobile racks, there's power going through, but for some reason either the motherboard doesn't want to accept the data transfer through the mobile rack, or the mobile rack can't transfer the data fast enough to the motherboard's liking.

I could get my PSU checked I suppose.  I tried tonight a SATA mobile rack, just to see if it would work, but nothing.  Then again the SATA didn't want to work even when plugged directly to the motherboard.  So maybe either the PSU is faulty, or the mobo is screwed.

I think that the answer to your first question could be added electrical resistance combined with a low watt power supply.  What I mean by that is that every time you use another set of connectors to plug something in causes electrical resistance.  That is why some power users don't like power supplies that have removable connector wires.  Your mobile rack creates an extra layer of electrical resistance due to the extra connectors needed in between the motherboard and the hard drives that your mobile rack requires.

I don't understand why the SATA drives don't work in your system.  Does your system require SATA drivers to be installed (F6) when you are installing Windows?  If so your drivers could be corrupt otherwise I suspect your motherboard is faulty or is does not have enough power from the power supply to run properly.  The problem is that sometimes you have to use trial and error method to track down a issue.  In this case your power supply maybe not be giving you the power needed to run the hard drives.

Given what information you have given us so far I would first check out the SATA drivers issue to make sure those drivers were installed correctly.  This may require a new install of windows.  Then would replace the power supply with at least a 600 Watt power supply.  If none of that works then I would see about replacing your motherboard.  I know replacing the power supply may feel like a unnecessary expense on the chance that it might solve the issue.  However the power supply you have now could be damaging (or has already damaged) your motherboard by not providing your system enough power to run.  So in this case I don't feel that replacing the power supply is a wasted expense.

Hope things work out for you, let us know.

[Dracho]

On the SATA thing... you positive you're not crossing ATA & SATA technologies?

[Centurus]

The graphics card doesn't require additional power for the fan, so that saves on power.  The DVD burner is always on IDE channel 1, while the hard drives are on channel 0, and I rarely ever have 2 hard drives plugged in at the same time, due to the fact that I hardly ever have to transfer large amounts of data from one drive to another.  Normally when I'm moving my stuff to a newer, larger drive.  But that's rare.

Aside from the case fans now being used, cause this is a new case as well, and also the heatsink and graphics, and obviously the mobo and processor, I've run all of these components with a 350watt.  Motherboard manual requires a minimum 300 watt supply.  Hell, right now I have only the DVD burner and hard drive plugged in with power, and have the fans unplugged, aside from the heatsink.  Even with all of that unplugged, problems still persist. 

I'll try replacing the power supply with a larger one.  Maybe I'll get one with modular cables.  Cut down on the cable mess in the case.

As for the SATA, as I had said before, I had downloaded the latest drivers for the SATA controller, and installed them properly, and the drive still stalled and stopped on its own.  The SATA hard drive that is.  And no, I am not crossing the IDE and SATA connections.  I take precautions against that.  Like I said, I hardly ever have 2 hard drives running at the same time.

I already know the mobile racks work.  They were working when they were in my last system, and they work when my older drives are plugged into them on this system.

I don't think the system is underpowered, cause I don't have enough components sucking power at the same time to even strain the PSU. 

Last night when the SATA refused to install after several attempts, and keep in mind this was an unused SATA drive so Windows was never installed, the Windows setup crashed.  Just refused to continue, and the drive was getting power.

I have tried using an IDE controller card.  I had an unused one that I tried, but the computer crashed when it tried to boot the hard drives, and the motherboard IDE controllers were disabled through BIOS manually.  I went and bought an Adaptec controller card.  The exact same thing happened.  I switched the slot that the controller card was put into, and still, same thing happened, and I followed the instructions carefully.  So trying a controller card won't work, cause the system refuses to allow it to work.  Just crashes.  Can't even install Windows with a drive hooked to the controller card.  Just dies before setup can even start.

So either my PSU is faulty, or, as you all are suggesting, just not enough, or it's the motherboard.  With the failed SATA hard drive installation last night, I'm leaning towards motherboard myself.

If anyone has any other thoughts, please, let me know.

My gut is telling me that the PSU is giving enough power to juice everything up, since most of these components were running flawlessly in my other system, and that had a 350 watt, barely a little more than what the motherboard said it required.