Seria ATA vs IDE

[Helmer]

Yea, I think I will... Now I stand before the next problem, the disk drive.

Every since I upgraded my system to what I have today(new mobo, cpu, ram, hd) - The diskdrive stopped working, it sais it's there in the bios and in windows, but it dosen't recognize any disks I put in.

What other than the cable can be the problem? It has power and the led is on.

 

[Zedric]

The floppy drive? If the LED is constantly on, the cable is turned the wrong way around. The twisted part should be at the floppy drive end and the red wire towards the power connector (on 90% the drives anyway).

 

[ming]

oh, actually the RPM on HDs make quite a bit of difference. Remember this when my friend borrowed my 10GB 5400rpm HD to backup some of his stuff. It took much longer than a drive that was 7200rpm.

 

[Helmer]

Thanks Zedric, I'll check that out.. Didn't occur to me that the led shouldn't be on all the time.

 

[Helmer]

Well the red wire were towards the power connector(I think that's what the mobo manual said too), I turned it around and that gave me a disk error.

So I've turned it back, tried 3 different disks and it keeps saying insert disk to all... It's like it opens the disk up(but that happens mechanically when inserted right?), but it never reads on it.

Led is still on all the time... heh.. when I turned the cable the other way around(isn't this the only cable that you can turn two ways?) the diskdrive weren't in the bios or winxp.

*scratches head*

 

[Helmer]

Maybe the drive is just plain old broken? I think I have a spare, but since I just moved into my gf's flat - well, it requires me to go through about 15 boxes(I'm horrible at packing >< ) so I'd rather avoid that.. hehe.. unless there's nothing else to do of course, I need that drive to get my os on the ata drive.

 

[Zedric]

It could be broken I guess. A floppy drive LED always on usually means cable is turned. But then it shouldn't show up in BIOS...

 

[Helmer]

I'll try and find the old one, or buy a new one tomorrow

Thanks for the help everyone! I have used the rep. button to all that helped, do you get the reason I type in or is that for an admin to approve it or sumthin?

 

[Zedric]

No, we get the reason messages, thanks!

 

[Helmer]

Okay, I got a new disk today (were going to buy other stuff too), I got an IDE to get rid of the disk problem *grin*

HD Tune: Maxtor 6Y120M0 Benchmark (SATA - 120GB)

Transfer Rate Minimum : 29.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 57.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 46.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 13.9 ms
Burst Rate : 94.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 12.7%

HD Tune: MAXTOR 6L080L4 Benchmark (Old IDE- 80GB)

Transfer Rate Minimum : 8.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 39.8 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 32.6 MB/sec
Access Time : 12.7 ms
Burst Rate : 80.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 4.8%

HD Tune: Maxtor 6Y160P0 Benchmark (New IDE - 160GB)

Transfer Rate Minimum : 37.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 56.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 48.9 MB/sec
Access Time : 14.2 ms
Burst Rate : 92.6 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 18.2%



Now the new IDE HD is supposed to be 160GB, but on my disk management screen... it only shows up as 128GB - what's the limit that winxp supports?

What HD would you use as system disc? The Sata disk right? How big a difference would is it irl..heh.. ? It's cause I'm lazy with them boxes with the diskdrive ><

 

[ming]

The IDE figures look better this time round. hehe

 

[Maveric169]

Now the new IDE HD is supposed to be 160GB, but on my disk management screen... it only shows up as 128GB - what's the limit that winxp supports?

Not sure but I know it is over 400GB. What you need to do is get your hands on Partition Magic and just resize the partition to get the rest of the space available. XP limits the initial drive size for some reason and has no tools to get at it.

 

[Zedric]

Windows XP before SP1 had a limit of 137 GB per drive, as does some IDE controllers (28 bit addressing issue). Since then controllers are made to support 48 bit addressing and Windows too. So since the drive shows up as 128 GB, this could be the issue. If Windows indeed des not report correct free space on the drive for another partition after you've upgraded to SP1 (or SP2) it's likely you mobo can't handle 48 bit addressing. Sometimes you can solve this by upgrading your BIOS, or using a RAID connector instead of the regular IDE connector on the mobo (if it has one).

The theoretical limit of NTFS is somewhere around 2 PB or some other insanely high number.

 

[Helmer]

Heh, it's that. I need to install SP1 & 2 then... I just heard that SP2 had problems with a lot of games, maybe that's old news and everything is fixed?

 

[Nick]

A solution to installing XP on an SATA drive without a floppy is to integrate the drivers into an XP installation disk.

It's a little tricky, so thankfully there's a few guides around to help you along:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=30190
http://greenmachine.msfnhosting.com/READING/addraid.htm

While your at it you can slipstream any service packs into your XP cd and make it an unattended setup using nuhi's wonderful tool, nLite, which can be found here:

nLite

 

[Helmer]

omg, thanks Nick - I'll see if I can make it work

 

[Nick]

No problem. Just remembered another useful tool, Green Machine's XPCreate which automates the whole proccess:

http://greenmachine.msfnhosting.com/XPCREATE/

 

[Helmer]

Nice.. thanks!

 

[Zedric]

Heh, it's that. I need to install SP1 & 2 then... I just heard that SP2 had problems with a lot of games, maybe that's old news and everything is fixed?

I haven't noticed any issues.

Nick: Thanks for the links, I'll need to make a slipstreamed disc as well.

 

[dave holbon]

One other observation that may be of use regarding floppy drives (internal) is that many computer cases internal cages for installing floppy drive into are not the correct size. This is not obvious and is compounded by the very flimsy metals used to construct these drives which result is the drive distorting if you use four screws to secure the drive. This in effect pulls the drive heads out of alignment with the tracks on the floppy disk and if I did not have an old copy of PC Technician to test the drive with would probably never have noticed.

If you fit a new floppy drive and is does not recognise a floppy being inserted, temporarily loosen the retaining screws on one side of the drive, this may cure the problem