Computer death.

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ScienceOne

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So I turned on my computer and the system drive was making a clicking noise. The system would not boot into Windows, and the comp took much longer during boot up to recognize the IDE drives. So I tried loading windows to my secondary drive and then look at the old drive to see if I could retrieve any files. Sigh... no. And now, with the new drive as the system drive, the comp doesn't recognize it's network connection to the internet. When I first plugged into the school network months ago it automatically detected the connection. Christ. I don't know what's happening. But here's my question for you folks:

Since I'm going to have to buy a new hard drive setup, I want to do it right. No more IDE. What is the fastest, most stable, quietest hard drive setups you guys know? SCSI RAID? SATA? Hit me.
 
scsi would be the fastest but it would cost you a fortune. We use ultra scsi 3 in our servers were I work and a 36G HD runs about $200. SATA 150 would be your best bet. I would say Westendigital or Segate.
 
So SATA over Ultra-ATA? Should I keep the drive sizes low like 80GB? Would you say I should use a RAID array? Striping or mirroring? More questions?
 
10,000 rpm SATA drives like this one, the largest drive they make is a 74GB. If you think you need more that one, Raid is the way to go. I have 1 WD raptor with a 2.4Mhz Pentium and have no trouble.
 
It is not that simple...

Look at your case before anything else. The 7,200 and 10,000 drives are pumping out heat and are failing too quickly.

Get a case that has a fan blowing directly across the drives, and do NOT stack the drives directly on top of each other. Also, if you go with IDE channels (e.g., PATA (Ultra-ATA) or SATA (Serial-ATA)), do NOT link disparate devices (i.e., connect a HDD as primary and a CD-RW as slave) as IDE channels only read/write from one device at a time (whereas SCSI can read/write simultaneously), and with IDE channels, regardless of which is being used, all read/writes move at the speed of the slowest controller on the chain. So if you yoke your blazing fast 10,000 RPM drive to a pokey CD, the CD is going to drag the Raptor down to it's level.

If you DO go with SCSI be prepared to have more configuration headaches, though YMMV.
 
Excellent. I'm learning. Now Ultra-ATA is the same thing as regular internal IDE right? And Serial ATA has the narrower cable? Which is faster/more reliable? I would love to go with scsi, but I just don't have the cash.
 
not to mention you need a raid controller card for your sata if your motherboard does not have one. and yes the 10k rpm would be the fastest and when comparingspecs make sure it has aleast an 8mb buffer and check for the one that has the lowest seek time. If you really are concerned about noise, I have seen website that offer extentions for all you cables so you can hide you pcin a closet or if you really want to get creative you can make a hole in the wall and pc the pc in another room. of course you dont have physical access to your machine.
raid 0 will can be used for faster data transfers and when configured in ths way all drives that make up the raid 0 configuration will appear as one drive. so 2 80 gig drives in a raid 0 will appear as 1 120 gig drive. how ever if one drive fails then all data in all the drives that were part of the raid 0 will be lost. Since the data was writen across all the drives. this is known as stripping. raid 0 is faster but fatal if just one drive fails. raid 0 should be used for your work space. then you have other raid configurations like raid 2, 3, 4 and so on. lets say a raid 3. this one will write data in all the drives but will write it in a formula disk1 + disk2 =disk3,d1 +d3 =d2, d2 + d3 =1 they all back each other up, of coures this takes up more disk space but its redundant. you can also replace a drive while the pc is still on. if a drive fails in a raid 3 you can replace the drive while its on and the other two drives will build the new drive like the old one. the are some advantages of a raid configuration
 
ScienceOne said:
Excellent. I'm learning. Now Ultra-ATA is the same thing as regular internal IDE right? And Serial ATA has the narrower cable? Which is faster/more reliable? I would love to go with scsi, but I just don't have the cash.
Click to expand...
IDE is just the channel. Ultra-ATA is Parallel-ATA technology (PATA) and represents the past, whereas Serial-ATA (SATA) appears (at this time) to be the future. The SATA tech promises faster throughput, though SCSI still rules for speed.
 
IDE is not your problem.

Drives die. Repeat this 1,000 times: "Drives die."

That's why you should make regular backups. ANYTHING you buy will eventually die.
 
Well yeah, I agree with you. I'm just really ticked off so now I'm gonna get the safest, fastest, best HDD setup I can afford instead of grabbing the first thing that comes along. Here's what I've decided:
Two Western Digital 80 GB 7200 RPMs in a RAID 0 setup. The price difference for the 10,000 was just too much. I'll be backing up these drives to a 200 GB external WD HDD. Hope this works.

You'd think that with my gig of ram, my AMD 64 3200 chip, my UAD-1, and my Delta 1010lt I'd be blazing but my audio still has pops and clicks once I record more than four or five tracks. Sigh, always something.
 
Any reason why you'd want to go RAID 0? If you want your data to be redundant (and therefore safe if one of the drives fail), use RAID 1.
RAID 0 stripes the data so that your read/write speeds are improved, but if 1 drive fails, you lose everything.
RAID 1 makes identical copies of the data onto both drives, so read speeds are improved and if 1 drive fails, you will be ok.
 
Well I was thinking Raid 0 for speed then just back up every session to the external. This would be cool, wouldn't it?
 
It would be cool if you were actually doing enough work to make a decent hard drive your problem. Without the raid setup you should be able to do at least 48 or more tracks at 24 bit 44k without a hiccup. If you are getting clicks and pops at only 4 tracks, my bet is that it isn't a hard drive problem, but something else. Any decent drive nowadays can handle more than most people throw at it and do it with ease. By adding raid 0 you certainly are not going with the safest route. My bet is that eventually it will bite you in the ass. It will run great for a period of time. What happens when you get so confident in it that you stop backing up every session? The fact that you just had a drive go and you are only getting 4 tracks before clicks and pops leads me to believe that something else is going on. What if you have a weak power supply and the CPU rail is too low? What if that problem is spreading and one day you will come in and your drives will be down?

None of these may actually be the problem, but the point I was trying to make is that you seem to be trying to solve a symptom of a problem and not the problem itself. Just be cautious until you find out what is really happening. Raid 0 does not strike me as cautious:)
 
just curious, how old is the failed drive and what model is it? what power supply were you using? you have a power backup and surge protector?
 
The raid setup is not to solve the popping/clicking problem. I know that's not a HDD issue because I bring mixes in from elsewhere and they work fine at high track numbers. I'm doing the RAID setup purely for speed. I thought it might be an issue with IRQ assignment and running my UAD-1 and my soundcard on the same one, but I'm not sure how to look into this problem.

The hard drive was a Western Digital 160 GB 7200 rpm w/ an 8 mb buffer. It's about six months old. I guess I got a lemon or some asshole with a hammer came into my room when I turned around to close the window. I'm not using a UPS but I am using a heavy-duty surge protector. My power supply is the one that comes with the Antec Sonata case.
 
ScienceOne said:
I thought it might be an issue with IRQ assignment and running my UAD-1 and my soundcard on the same one, but I'm not sure how to look into this problem.
Click to expand...
If you have an extra pci slot, try moving the soundcard to the extra one.
 
ScienceOne said:
I'm not using a UPS but I am using a heavy-duty surge protector. My power supply is the one that comes with the Antec Sonata case.
Click to expand...
First of all:

All this lust for the bandwidth of RAID for the task of audio multitracking is like hunting mosquitos with a .45.

Like was explained previously- if 4 tracks choke your system- something else is up. I got 36 tracks on my PII-450 with a 13 GB WD IDE HD. That should tell you how old THAT system was!

Second: Get thee a decent UPS. They have gotten much cheaper than a few years ago.
 
sounds like to me u just got a bunk drive.........it's a damn shame it happened too.
 
Yeah, it also sucks because my essays for political theory, pictures, e-mails and other stuff was on that drive.

I know the new HDD config won't improve my situation. I ran thirty two tracks, with VST instruments, AND Reason simultaneously on an old WD 40 GB with a Pentium 4 (1.5 ghz). This was about two years ago. The reason for the hard drives is just pure luxury performance (and to obviously replace the dead one). A UPS is definitely at the top of my list now.

Does anyone know how to figure out if I'm overloading my PCI bus or with just two cards? It just doesn't make sense. How can I figure out my IRQ assignment? If I re-assign the slots to different IRQs in the bios, does it matter what numbers the slots have or is that irrelevant just so long as they are DIFFERENT numbers?
 
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