HDD and pc hanging

[Sasq]

Ok guys need some help.
I have an ECS K7S6A, two hdd's on the ata100 chain. master is an ibm 80gig gxp120, secondary is a new segate 7200 80 gig drive (don't have the model no. handy atm)

the ibm has always had an interesting *feature* of recalibrating every so often. recently i added the segate and a firewire card.

since that time, when ever the ibm appears to recalibrate the pc hangs for 3 seconds or so, apart from being anoying this is a problem for dv input etc.

Any suggestions

thanks Dan

[The PIT]

By recalibrating I presume you mean loads of clicking grinding noises???

[Hati]

Did you run the Drive fitness test on your IBM drive?
See

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

reminds me of one of my IBM HDDs failing last year. DFT reported an unrecoverable error and the drive was replaced by IBM.

Hati

[Sasq]

nope this is not the click of death. just the standard heat change recalibration.

it's only started with the second drive online. so that could be it, i havn't had the time to unplug/plug fault find yet.
Just interested if anyone has any ideas

[Wombat]

I've found IBMs to be particularly sensitive to droops in supplied voltage. Could adding this latest drive be straining your PS?

[thop]

usually you should not notice the calibration. sounds like a faulty drive to me.

[Technoid]

Hm... if it does go through heat recalibration all the time:
Why don't you try to cool it a bit and see what happens?

Othervise I agree with Wombat

[The PIT]

I'm going with wombat as well. I've now cleared all IBM drives from my system all dodgy bar one and thats in my sisters pc.

[Byock]

Thats funny, I have used IBM drives for years, and have never seen or heard it recalibrate. Sounds fishy to me...

[labrador]

The SiS chipset sucks

I built a system around a K7S5A and I had some stability problems there never experienced elsewhere. G400 had to be run in AGP 1x mode and memory had to be under clocked at PC100 rather than rated PC133. I sold the system to my brother later.

I read in Maximum PC that the SiS chipset common to your board and mine is not a great one for compatibility and system stability. If you are running Windows XP you might be able to upgrade your motherboard to something more stable without reinstalling the OS. Otherwise you might consider a solid ATA controller card such as those from Promise (or Maxtor - is the same chipset and drivers as Promise controller).

Other than this I'd suspect the IBM drive could be defective. As you likely know there is a class action suit against IBM for their 75 GXP drives:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/22412.html

There is a chance this is a related flaw in the design.

[thop]

sasq: run hdtach 2.61 on that drive, i remember i had two drives with very similar behaviour.

[Sasq]

I'll put it through its paces this weekend when i get time,
shouldn't be the psu (420w), also have a hdd fan on it.
From first use its always occasionally recalibrated its self (or done something) but its never affected the pc before, just the occasional read to end/read back done. but now with the extra drive the whole system hangs.