DeltaX and Hard Drives

Hi GreenGoose1, I don't Sleep at Night, it's about 2.30am to 3.00am when I go to Bed.......lol. Are Commodores still around then!!..lol
40Gbt HD partitioned into 14.7-22.5 (or thereabouts) C: 4.63Gbt used, 10Gbt left + E: 1.96Gbt used, 20.5 Gbt left
OS on C: + Programs, Desktop Icons, Download Folder, My Comp Folder.....If it gos Down there is Nowt to Lose except the Programs....Easy to Load back in.....
On F: 80Gbt is All My MP3s (14Gbt) + Photos from Digi Camera. (20Gbt)...Only about 19 folders of Photos to be backed up onto 13 CDRs (will be done by 2moro).....All Others backed up n safe (I Hope)...
This Fujitsu is Now EMPTY and I'm debateing on whether to buy a New 40Gbt HD n put it into one of them cases n use it Externaly..Or...put it back onto the PCI ATA100....

Can these Hard Disks be Repaired via Software or Shop...if so...is it worth it, or are we better off scraping n buying new!!??

DRMDJ........No Misstakeing you is there! Only person I know that gos into that Kind of Length , Clearly n Consisely, Describeing what it is n how to do....Well Done.......& Yes.....Good to see you are still around.....Take Care....

Nothing to add to the above remarks, except to say it's really great to see you aboard Doc! You have added much to 'this' ol' noggin before, and that post brought a lot more daylight into the house.:D
One point this post made(at least for me) was it's time to move on to the world of NT computing for more reasons than just 'security'.
Wonder how long it will be until the bios will be totally encompassed by an OS and no longer needed except as a 'start switch' ?

Hi All,

The info DrMDJ gave will sure help us on multibooting and also in just plain troubleshooting. I have nothing more to add at the moment. Still plugging pieces in here and there in my mind.

But all we have done makes hard drives not so mysterious it seems. :)

I'd like to mention the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) figures given by drive manufacturers as a supposed measure of their reliability.

I was reading a review of hard drives in a magazine that purports to cater to "computer professionals" whatever they are, and the experienced PC user. I was somewhat disappointed that they marked down the Hitachi drive because Hitach will no longer give a MTBF figure - which is refreshingly honest IMHO.

I have long considered that the MTBF figures given by drive manufacturers is utterly meaningless (and Scott Mueller backs me up on this in "Upgrading & Repairing PC's"). They are derived entirely artificially using some very dubious statistical methods (lies, damned lies and statistics and all that), and give absolutely no indication of whether any individual drive is likely to fail or not.

Does anyone think that this is a useful measure of drive reliability? If so, I'm waiting to be convinced.

Supersparks, this I feel gives the best explaination of the mess in my book
Sure has some points to concider there.

wow, that was a rather lengthy but good read. I have bookmarked it for future use

Good Morning All,

We have covered some territory in the past couple of days which bring to mind some questions.

1. On a hard drive that might be going bad because of a symtom being heard or operation fouled up, there is a chance that the software might be the only problem and not the hard drive. How do you ascertain which is has the problem?

2. What is the best configuration for multiple hard drives in a computer? And which sytem IDE or SCSI or both?

3. How many people use both SCSI and IDE on the same computer?

The MTBF I use is my experience and keeping up with others who post about it. The factory figures can be skewed from several things. Incomplete data and inaccurate reporting being the biggest two.

:) :)

Excellent article on MTBF, Train :)

Yes, we should discuss diagnostics. All hard drive manufacturers will have a diagnostic utility available for download. These can be run from a floppy using a Win9x/ME Startup floppy even when it's not possible to boot into Windows. These utilities can nearly always tell you if there is a problem with the hard drive.

A good trick if you are hearing suspicious noises from within the PC is to take the cover off the case and touch the tip of a screwdriver against the casing of the HD and the handle end against your ear - you'll be able to tell straight away if the noises are emanating from the hard drive or from elsewhere.

If you have more than one HD it's best to keep them on separate IDE channels. This is because each IDE channel can only read or write at one moment in time, not both simultaneously, so if they are on separate channels copying data from one drive to the other will be significantly faster.

Quote:

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Originally posted by greengoose1
1. On a hard drive that might be going bad because of a symptom being heard or operation fouled up, there is a chance that the software might be the only problem and not the hard drive. How do you ascertain which is has the problem?

2. What is the best configuration for multiple hard drives in a computer? And which system IDE or SCSI or both?

3. How many people use both SCSI and IDE on the same computer?

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1. If I suspect a bad HD: I BACKUP before doing anything else. Then test it with Scandisk or other Utilities that are installed (e.g. Norton System Works).
If that doesn't solve problems with it (assuming it's more or less non-operational at this stage), I'll try a format and fdisk it from scratch. If that doesn't help either the manufacturers tools come into play.

2. Separate IDE channels. If available keep opticals on IDE 0 and 1 and move HD's to RAID.

3. Current setup includes

• SATA HD on first SATA connector (SCSI boot)
• ATA100 HD on first RAID channel
• 3 optical drives on IDE 0 and 1

But I am not too happy about the SATA performance yet. Startup and file access is about 10% faster, however, ghosting this drive takes about 4-5 times as long as before from HD to HD.

Quote:

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But I am not too happy about the SATA performance yet. Startup and file access is about 10% faster, however, ghosting this drive takes about 4-5 times as long as before from HD to HD.

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Now then i would hazard that for those of us who like to use Ghost or the like may want to to advoid that type of setup.

You are Ghosting from the SATA to the ATA HDD I assume. Because your time factor is the same as if it was on the same ribbon or a partition on the same hdd.

Not quite clear on what you mean Train; or why this happens.

I used to ghost a single partition to image from RAID 0 (ATA133) to RAID 1 (ATA100). Ghost's transfer rates peaked at ~600kb.

The same size partition from SATA to RAID 0 (ATA100) peaks at a mere ~170kb.

(Those kb's might be a bit off - try to recall w/o my notes.)

You answered just fine.
Kind of odd ,it seems to me. But I do not deal with raid.

I'll keep experimenting with it - just to see.
Ahh, and for clarification, I use the RAID controllers O and 1, I do not use RAID arrays 0,1 or 1+0.

does SATA's data transfer in parallel in the same way as the "old" IDE?

SATA is serial. See the following:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1046951,00.asp