RESOLVED: Hard Drives Powering Down The Power On!?!?!?!

Enisada

Usually during hard drive activity my hard drives will suddenly power down then power back up. This occurs on all my drives.

Note: I have 2 Raptor 36GB in RAID 0
Secondary RAID 0 is 2 Western Digital SE 80GB

I've had this setup for six months and no problems now

Please help...

qparadox

Hmm so you mean you hear them slow down as in shutting off? What power supply do you have and how are the drives connected. It sounds like you may be somehow breaching the power supply limit of the PSU.

How often does this happen? Any other effects you notice? (heat, room temp @ the time)

The drives in those arrays can probably suck back a combined 100W or so. Given an average system built around them you should have a 400W+ quality PSU in there...

Enisada

In that rig I'm running a Antec True Blue 480Watt PSU. I disconnected both the 80GB drives and ran both the Raptors off a dedicated PSU Rail and they still do it. I hear them shut down then the system pauses what it was doing cause the HDs aren't on then I hear them spin back up. :bawling:

Cyclonite

I had it happen with a recent HDD and it turned out to be bad. If they're both doing it at the same time, though, I'd suspect something else.

Enisada

Indeed they are both doing it at the same time. I'm going to try and install XP on just one of my 80GB to rule out the RAID.

Jengo

Try going into your Control panel> Power Options, then for the Turn off Harddisks chose the option> Never. then click ok

i dont know if you have done this, but its worth a try.

oh and if you are in XP the control panel is in Classic View

Straight_Man

Jengo wrote:

Try going into your Control panel> Power Options, then for the Turn off Harddisks chose the option> Never. then click ok

i dont know if you have done this, but its worth a try.

oh and if you are in XP the control panel is in Classic View

Also, check your BIOS settings. IF you have a Power Management setting that is too agressive, or out of sync with Window's settings, this can happen and require soemthing as bad as a reset to get out of-- If you are not losing data this way and the drives are just spinning down, could be PSU or the drives energy use mgt algorithms just kicking in and with RAID if noe side of a mirro shuts down the whole mirror suspends. Then, because mirror is brokenly suspended, other drive is not getting data, so it does an energy use PM spindown. If not data is lost, fine-- if data lost, there is a LARGE DRIVE update that will keep XP from shutting down HDs without more delay, and this update might help a mirrored RAID setup indirectly as it keeps the BIOS from seeing drives as powered down and keeps windows from using PM on HD devices as suddenly-- delay before each shutdown is made greater. BUT, if you have BIOS set to shut things down too fast, BIOS will ignore windows and shut down things by those rukles and the first Widnwos will know about it is when it happens. Get large drive update plus chack BIOS, and check the PM in XP. Combo of all three, not just one. XP as built in Home and Pro was tuned for 80 GB drives and down through about 40 GB drives-- 120's are far enough out of this range that the large drive shutdown delay update (which increases time from last write and time minimum allowed for writes by XP) can help a mirrored raid install a lot as well as not lose data on large drives when XP is shutdown or restarted.

So, if you have BIOS set to impose radical PM in a short time, then BIOS can preempt other software and if BIOS is slacker but compatibly set, XP can totally control things and with a RAID setup that is what you WANT. Either match or exceed in terms of SLOWER in BIOS what is in XP, or BIOS can preempt XP.

If this does not help, THEN R&R PSU and swap in a bigger capacity one.

Enisada

Alright great, thanks for the suggestions John_D and Jengo. I'll be sure to try all of them when I get home from work. Thanks and I'll let you know what happens...

Straight_Man

Please do let us know both if it works and what does not work for you.

Enisada

Alright this is what I got over the weekend. Drives started to have problems being reconized by the BIOS. I figured if it was a power issue, that would be determined by changing out the PSU. That was replaced and the problem presisted. I unplugged all RAID controllers. Try booting windows with just one of the 80GB connected. Would get though some of the setup before it would BSOD on me. So I tried to download Western Digital Diag 5.04, however their file was down over the weekend. The only other place I could find it was in a CD combo Ultimate Boot CD. So downloaded that on dial-up, that was painful. After got that downloaded tried to boot it up on the crippled system. Drives continued to power up and down continuoisly. Pulled the drives out of the system and put them into a working system. Ran the a zeroing program to rule out any data corruption. After several hours of that repartitioned the drive and ran some test in WinXp. Everything checked out in WinXP. However as soon as the drive was placed back in the systerm it would fail and continue to click power up and down. Replaced video card to rule out video. Did a memory test on the system. Reflashed the BIOS. The only conclusion I can think of is the motherboard is some how damaged. Is there anything that else it could be???

Ilik3m0dz

sounds to me like you might have warnout ide cables... moving ide cables around alot sometimes messes them up , a bran new set of ide cables fixes alot of bios/os HDD problems. :Rocker:

muddocktor

Yeah, bad ide cables might be the problem or maybe the motherboard itself is the problem, if those drives behave ok in another system. Since the raptors are sata, then I would lean more towards mobo problems; I haven't heard of sata cables going bad so far.

Enisada

Alright well this is a little old but thats ok. I did fix the problem. What made this problem so hard to solve was the fact that two devices in the computer failed. The mobo and the PSU. Apparently my friend didn't have a surge protector on his system. The surge damaged both the mobo and the PSU. He said one day the power was so bad that the power came off and on over ten times throughout the day. Anyways he now has a new board and a new PSU and a new APC surge protector. Live and learn.

Straight_Man

What can happen is if the power circuitry on the motherboard goes bad, the PSU can get a surge backfed into it from the motherboard. Then the PSU can get damaged. If the PSU gets damaged, then it can also feed voltages out of range compared to what the motherboard can handle-- then the damaged PSU damaged the motherboard.

But a UPS is something that is needed, good that your friend got one. If APC UPS's fail, APC provides an umbrella to pay for system damage. This will vary by UPS quality grade. That umbrella covers connected components, and can be $3,000-$100,000's of dollars depending on the UPS array size and quality grade. So your friend not only got power protection physically, but also has insurance for the guaranteed life of the UPS he purchased. I have a UPS here with a self-test function that works and the UPS works even after Charley and then Frances came through our area. It is an APC Backups Pro 1100. In fact, it supplied power as Frances went by and I was working on a customers box on another UPS at same time most of the time Frances went by. During the time Charley went through I and the bigger UPS and my business box were about 70 miles south in Naples, FL. The box had no online connect, but processed digital camera files AS Charley hit Punta Gorda and power faded in and out in Naples. I am using the same UPS here and it still self-tests fine, and the computers(both of mine and my mother's box which runs on yet another APC UPS at need) are solid as a pair of computing rocks. No hardware nor file system damge on either box.

The computers and Bigger UPS also survived intact a 700+ mile trip to and from Valdosta, Georgia when my mother decided to bail when Ivan was charted as coming right our way (she insisted I go with her). That track changed, we came home. I am home now and back to normal computer use. APC has been known for decades for its UPS technology, and I have had many experiences with UPS from them. The UPS the customer box was on as Frances blew by was mfr'd in the mid 1990's, still has original parts and functions fine. It is an APC Backup 280.

EVERYTHING except the laser printer here runs off APC UPS technology-- as far as computers go. The laser printer was protected by a Tripplite IsoBar multilevel (multiple levels of MOV and other surge suppression stages) surge suppression strip that is OVER thirteen years old and has been in use in three states and still works fine. That strip is about $50.00 worth of anti-surge technology (at thirteen plus year old prices), and was worth its weight in Gold almost for the protection it gave and still gives multiple systems over the years in three states-- it still functions fine.

Sorry to "run on a bit," I wanted to illustrate points with real world cases. I highly recommend APC and Tripplite industrial grade power suppression and UPS technology. Both brands back up thier words with a money guarantee of protection in case of failure.

Enisada

Great post Straight_Man glad to here those hurricanes didn't give you to much grief. I stand by APC and some sort of surge protection is a must. I told my friend when he got his system that he should invest in a UPS or at the very least a surge bar. He didn't listen and it cost him. he was lucky nothen else in his system was damaged. He was just using a power bar. Anyways I use to have two APC 500CS but I quickly out grew them and I am now running with APC 1500RS w/ extra battery. I say is well worth my investement and won't ever have a system that isn't plugged into some sort of protection.

kefart

Isn't it funny how the subject can stray from HDD's that keep spinning down to which UPS is better?