Sata cabling

I have had a disk connection problem which seems to relate to failing sata
cables. The BIOS has failed intermittently to detect one or both hard
drives. The problem was more obvious with the master drive so I replaced the
cable 14 days ago and there was no further problem until this morning. The
problem this morning was the slave drive so I have replaced the cable for
that drive. It has now been working for a bit over two hour.

The problem first became apparent a month ago when I found the system would
freeze after it had been running some time. Resetting sometimes worked and
sometimes resulted in a failed boot. Eventually the system would boot but
the problem would happen again some hours later or the next day. Sometimes
there have been Event Viewer reports -mainly ID: 11 referring to the
Controller. Often the problem is unreported. This is probably because the
Error is occurring before Event Viewer starts.

From a friend I got these comments.

"In my view, the SATA 'Connector' is an engineering blunder. A sort-of flat
sleeve slides over a notched part on the edge of the board whereupon sit
some exposed/un-insulated traces. Flat conductors encased within a plastic
bit are slid into contact with them. There is no mechanism but friction to
keep the 'connector' in place. Entirely inadequate. It is not designed for
repeated make/break insertion/removal. If subjected even to a low number of
such operations (design spec is 50), it will fail. (5 000 for an eSATA
connector). If I have to repeatedly disconnect-connect a drive during
testing, I replace the cable as a matter of routine."

I am interested in knowing whether others have encountered this problem and
how common place it is?

TIA


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Sata cabling
    ... The computer is a desktop with a Gigabyte 915/910 Series motherboard. ... two drives are a Seagate and a Maxtor. ... the SATA 'Connector' is an engineering blunder. ... cables had lock latches. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Externally connecting internal IDE drives
    ... there are several problems with using any other attachment than IDE ... >actual removable drives that are housed in the drive carriers. ... Why put a SCSI cable onto a connector configured to drive IDE/ATAPI? ... customer several cables to take the floppy interface from the motherboard ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: Buffer overrun and "Trend chipaway Virus (R) on guard"!?
    ... If you have one drive on the cable, it goes on the end connector. ... they mention "Master Only" as the jumper choice. ... When using two drives, one drive is master, the other drive slave. ... The 80 wire cables also typically support "Cable_Select" jumpering. ...
    (alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt)
  • Re: Whcih drive is which on IDE cable?
    ... Simply look at the jumpers on the back of the drive and remove the one that's jumpered as the Slave, unless you would happen to have the OS installed on it, which then you would remove the Master. ... Cable Select uses a special cable that uses a CSEL signal by grounding pin 28 to the IDE controller on the motherboard and the wire for pin 28 only goes to the middle connector. ... If you swap the drives between the connectors on the CSEL cable, the drives Master/Slave configuration will swap on the drives as well. ... Unlike the old cables, with the 80-conductor cable, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
  • Re: Whcih drive is which on IDE cable?
    ... Simply look at the jumpers on the back of the drive and remove the one that's jumpered as the Slave, unless you would happen to have the OS installed on it, which then you would remove the Master. ... Cable Select uses a special cable that uses a CSEL signal by grounding pin 28 to the IDE controller on the motherboard and the wire for pin 28 only goes to the middle connector. ... If you swap the drives between the connectors on the CSEL cable, the drives Master/Slave configuration will swap on the drives as well. ... Unlike the old cables, with the 80-conductor cable, ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware)
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