Re: Fans and Hard Drives

From: JAX (slipslide_at_pop.not)
Date: 12/05/04 

Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 22:32:03 -0700

Re. the later post about using Seagate, that's still a debatable point, but
personally I'd go for WD instead until someone eventually PROVES to me that
Seagate has as good a track record as WD.

The OP states that the failed drives were Maxtor. I have never had much luck
with Maxtor and have switched to WD, but I will have to consider the Seagate
warranty when I buy another drive. Seagate's is 5 years!!

FWIW, JAX

"johnf" <john_f@bigREMOVEpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:%230gpr%23d2EHA.3408@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> Basic rules I use.
>
> If the cabling allows it, separate feeds for the drive fans. (any
> component which is motor-driven, such as fans - which have to start
> spinning from a static state, have a quite high 'stall-current" before the
> fan actually starts rotating, which will cause a voltage drop to the drive
> on the same cable. Miniscule possibly, but depending on the cable
> cross-area, but it's still there. The fan, for a short period demands a
> high current, which causes a voltage drop to anything else on that cable.
>
> Keep as much breathing space as your case will allow between 2 drives to
> give ample airflow above & below each & make sure your case ducting is
> pretty dust-free..
> Whether the drives are S-ATA or IDE really doesn't come into it AFAIK.
>
> Regarding LEDs, they draw bugger-all current, so I'd just classify that
> advice as ignorance/ extremely limited electronic knowledge.
>
> Re. the later post about using Seagate, that's still a debatable point,
> but personally I'd go for WD instead until someone eventually PROVES to me
> that Seagate has as good a track record as WD.
>
> BTW, it wouldn't do any harm to dig up some Power-supply voltage
> monitoring software - you may have one rail that's feeding a voltage way
> out of tolerance, seeing you've managed to lose 2 drives in a short period
> of time.
>
> --
>
> johnf
>
>>I have lost 2 hard drives in the last two months. One being 2 years old
>> and did not concern me. The other was just recently but Maxtor RMA it
>> successfully. The Hard drives were IDE types.
>>
>> I was reading in some articles (but cannot remember what the links are),
>> that you should not connect fans to the hard drive power leads. Can
>> anyone confirm this to be true? If this is true, should you connect the
>> LED power button to hard drive leads as well?
>>
>> Thanks in advance.
>>
>> --
>> Mike
>
>