Velociraptor

Maguscreed · 05 Jul 2011

I had some first generation raptors and this is why i quit using them. They were nothing but problematic for me. Yes WD replaced 3 of the 4 of them but they just kept dying on me. It also seemed that a large portion of the file reads it was doing wasn't even larger enough for it to actually spin up to speed. After a fiasco with a raid card supposedly made specifically for them actually reducing their performance I finally just quit.

metalmania31 · 05 Jul 2011

dsperber said:

Post post script...

I'm now of the opinion that it really wasn't the cable or connector. I'm now of the opinion that my drive was truly dying a slow death. I gave it a shot of adrenaline with the cable re-seating, but really the drive was doomed.

Yesterday it started acting up again, just as it had before. I decided enough was enough, and broke out the "spare" drive I'd purchased some weeks back but never installed at that time.

Grrr...

Tonight it acted up again, exactly as it had before! This is the brand new drive, installed just last week.

Same symptom... SATA port 4 (to which that drive is connected) suddenly disappeared from BIOS sensing. And none of my usual "coaxing" methods could bring it back.

I decided to move the cable to another SATA port (#2, which is right next to #4), just in case it really was a failing SATA connector on the motherboard.

Once I did that, sure enough the drive was now sensed again and I was back in business. Fingers crossed this is the final and permanent solution.

So, looks like I threw out what probably was a perfectly good Velociraptor last week, if it was the SATA port 4 connector all along that was the flaky component.

Oh well. Alls well that ends well. Fingers crossed.

Did you consider your motherboard as a potential source of the issue?

dsperber · 05 Jul 2011

metalmania31 said:

Did you consider your motherboard as a potential source of the issue?

Sure... last year when this first started happening. I'd thought it was a defective/flaky SATA connector (there are six on the ASUS P5Q3 board).

I especially thought it was the board when I moved the SATA cable to another connector and it worked. But then after a while, that flaked as well.

As my earlier posts explain, I assumed all of the likely culprits as at fault, from the board, to the chipset, to the cable, to the drive. Swapped everything I could (including buying a new Velociraptor drive, under the assumption that it was the old one which was probably the guilty party after all else failed).

Never occurred to me it might be the power cable/adapter itself... until this most recent event when the 3" MOLEX-to-SATA power adapter cable fell off its MOLEX-end in my hand.

So now I do NOT believe anything else was at fault. It must have been this flaky power connection all along, and only an accidental physical "jostle" to have it make full contact again (while I was inside the case playing with everything else) was really the "solution".

I'm certain now that there's nothing wrong with my PSU, mobo, SATA cables, or any of the SATA connectors. It was just the power source to the drive, with a sloppy MOLEX connection.