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Serial ATA Cables - crappy little connectors

  • 09-05-2006 7:59pm
    #1
    HSo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 68 ✭✭


    Had a Hard Drive prob recently. Thought the HD was shagged, however closer inspection revealed that the SATA data cable was at fault. TO be more precise the connector into the back of the drive was rubbish as it is too loose and I discovered to my horror the two other SATAs had the same problem, just by luck they didn't give any trouble.

    So these little red cable seem a bit crap. I have seen that Western Digital have a nifty thing called Secure Connect (see link below). But it is only compatable with certain makes of SATA.

    Has anyone else had this problem and other than using a big of spit and tape have you managed to find a decent alternative connector or what?

    Thanks for any suggestions.

    http://www.wdc.com/en/products/wdsc50rcw.asp


Comments

  • #2
    Cuddlesworth
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,010 ✭✭✭✭Cuddlesworth


    I have had the same problem, mainly because I am in and out of my pc all the time and I stress them a lot. That being said I have Ide cables fail on me as well so...


  • #3
    HSo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 68 ✭✭HSo


    Right here's a follow up. Problem sorted, however life is not simple so I found there was two problems.

    Maplin do SATA cables where the power and the data are moulded into one plug for the back of the drive and they are nice and secure.

    I did find another problem which was making the drives act up (I have 3 SATAs - 80gX2 and 200GX1). The problem was with a service called "StarWind ISCSI" which recent versions of ALcohol 120 installs for virtual drives. This service did not present a problem before on another machine because it had no SATA. Further the problem didn't manifest until about three weeks after I had transfered the prog from one machine to the other, so it wasn't obvious straight away. Incidently it was mainly the 200G drive which gave trouble (Maxtor) by using 100%CPU and generally make a funny seeking noise.

    So disabling that service finally sorted the issue.

    This may be of help if anyone else finds a similar problem some day.


  • #4
    HSo
    Closed Accounts Posts: 68 ✭✭HSo


    Hi Folks I taught I better give an update on this issue as it seems I was wrong about the StarWind ISCSI service. It is not the problem I thought it was.

    The problem came back after a few weeks and I have doen more work on it.

    Spec is DFI Infinity NFII Ultra with nVIDIA® nForce2 chipset.
    Three Sata drives , 2 samsung 80g and 1 Maxtor 200g

    I update the BIOS which updated also the SATA Bios controller and that did not really help much.

    Any background tasks using the drives freezes the system for about 30 seconds at a time – AVG antivirus and a backup utility – SYSback.

    Data on drives is not corrupted and usually chkdsk with the appropriate switches will fix the issue and everything is ok for a week or so and otherwise the system runs well.

    I did find one punter on a dfi forum who claims that the APCIUniprocessor Driver seems to be causing the problem and he thinks that this SATA controller (silicon Image) doesn’t like IRQs above 15 and disabling the APIC in Bios ( if you have that facility) sorts the problem.

    I am continuing to try to solve this problem (I’m taking another way out by installing a new mainboard), but just to let you know that my theory about Alcohol and its virtual drive does seems to hold water.


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