Managing Hard drives - Using 3

[djblade]

Hi, just bought a new 7200 rpm 300gb hard drive which i'm going to install later today..
My current hard drives are both 5400 rpm, 1 is 200 gb which i have o.s. on, and the other is 160 gb, both have currently got 3 partitions.

1 of the drives, or even both may be about to fail, as i can hear a noise sort of like *clicking* sounds, not all the time though... intermittently....

I disconnected one drive to see if this isolated the problem, but it was still there...... so i suspect the 200 gb drive..

Anyway, i'm planning to put the O.S. onto the 300 gb new drive, as its faster, so how would you manage the other 2 drives, i'm putting 1 of the old drives on a raid card, as my secondary ide channal is home to 2 pioneer 108 drives....

How would you manage the drives ??

Thanks in advance for any help.......

[Nobodydies]

If you are planning to use both dvd writers at the same time then it is better to have them in a separate IDE channel.
If I understood correctly from your post you are having 4 IDE and 5 devices (3 hard discs and 2 DVD writers) that means that you have to use in a common IDE one hard disc and one DVD-r, and my advice is to choose the hard disc that is NOT having the material you want to burn.
Of course this not means that if you are gonna use a common IDE for your DVD writers you are having problems, it is just my method (and I am not alone) NOT to load my IDEs with many devices.

So my opinion is this:
Primary IDE--------------->1st Hard disc with OS
Secondary IDE------------>2nd Hard disc + 1st DVD writer
RAID Primary IDE-------->3rd Hard disc
RAID Secondary IDE----->2nd DVD Writer

I hope that this is going to help you.

[djblade]

The two writers on my secondary ide work superb together, so i aint gonna change them.....

anyone else ??

[budz]

nothing wrong with putting your hard drives on the same ide and the dvd burners on the same same ide as well. dvd burners don't work well on pci controller/raid cards.

this is my suggestion:
primary ide master: 300 gb hard drive with os
primary ide slave:

secondary ide master: dvd burner
secondary ide slave: dvd burner

raid primary ide: 2nd hard drive
raid primary slave ide: 3rd hard drive

or you could just run that 300 gb hard drive off that raid card therefore freeing up the primary ide's.

just my 2 cents.

[djblade]

Still got problems with the hard drives making noise


300gb hard drive, 2 partitions on primary ide (20gb & 280 gb)
160gb on raid secondary,
200gb on raid primary,
2 pioneer dvd 108's on secondary ide

so, all drives set to master (of course, the 108's are set to primary and secondary on the M.B. ide's)

why do i hear this clinking, rattle still ????

even if i only connect the 300gb drive, it makes noises..........

HELP ME PLEASE.......

should i use the cs setting (i think that was the other option for the jumper settings)

[budz]

if you're still hearing clicking and rattling then perhaps you should test out those hard drives to make sure they are not failing. go to the hard drive manufacturers site and download their utilities to test out the drives.

[Nobodydies]

CS means cable select and unfortunatelly will not help you with your noisy problem....
Perhaps your drives are somehow "tuned" together or with your power supply unit, and produce this sounds......
But on the other hand you said that this noise come alone from the 300 GB hard disc too.

I lost my case....
Sorry...

[djblade]

checked all connections and jumper settings, everthing is ok, maxtors utility tool shows all drives ok........

what else can be causing these probs ??

[budz]

make sure you used the maxtor utility tool with the hard drives connected to the motherboard IDE's. if you've done the utility test with the drives connected to a PCI CONTROLLER CARD you won't be getting correct information from the maxtor utility. i had mine connected to a PCI CONTROLLER CARD and the test told me my drive was fine. my 200 gb hd would not allow me to defrag it so i suspected something was wrong with it. i contacted maxtor tech and he told me about having the hd connected to the motherboard IDE. low and behold my maxtor failed the utility test and i got a rma for my 200 gb hard drive that wasn't even 3 months old.

[djblade]

thanks 4 that, but like i said, the noise is there on the new 300gb drive, which is on my primary ide, even when its the only drive connected to the pc..... (Its brand new)

just ran norton av scan, and even the wife said the pc was making a hell of a lot of noise, as i write this, its silent........which it is quite a lot of the time.....

[budz]

thanks 4 that, but like i said, the noise is there on the new 300gb drive, which is on my primary ide, even when its the only drive connected to the pc..... (Its brand new)

try buying a new ide cable for your hard drive. just a suggestion.

[Marty2003]

Maybe the noises are normal? Hard drives do make a sort of grinding noise when being accessed. The noise might even be amplified if the drive's rattling against the case if it's loose. It also might not be the hard drives at all. Maybe there's a fan that's making the noise or even one of the DVD drives.

[djblade]

gonna try that..... the fan.

but it makes a noise most when i'm reading from 1 drive, and writing to another.....

gonna try a new ide cable too.....

could it be any thing to do with any settings in bios ??

[rallynavvie]

Whoa, did they ever make 200GB drives in 5400rpm flavours?

[djblade]

Whoa, did they ever make 200GB drives in 5400rpm flavours?

Very helpful rallynavvie !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rallynavvie]

I'm confused, did I help you out with something? I was just wondering if there ever were slower speed drives that large. I would have guessed your 200GB drive to be a 7200rpm model.