Power Overload?

[jjsimas]

For a month I have been troubleshooting this problem.

Although I am not stumped, I want your opinions.

I have an Antec 250W Power Supply, 2 IBM DMA66 hard drives, and a Promise FastTrak66 controller (which controls the IBM drives and is configured for RAID 0 [mirroring]).

Randomly, one of the drives will shut down (i.e. begin to down spin as if it lost power) and then power back up within like 1-2 seconds. Although since it is mirrored, it doesn't (supposedly) corrupt the system, I want to know what's wrong. This happens about 1 time every 72 hours of running.

I believe this is not supposed to happen because:
a) I have power saving features shut off.
b) It used to not do this.

I know that it isn't the disks because:
a) It happens to both of them, only one at a time. It is very unlikely that both disks would start failing at the same time.

I know that it isn't the power cables because:
a) I've tried different ones.

I know that it isn't the DMA66 cables because:
a) I've tried different ones.

There are only two things that I think it might be:
a) The power supply. Although the rest of the system never seems to not have enough power, there is more resistance in getting power into the hard drive, so the power readily goes other places when there is a short supply.
b) The software. Maybe WinMe or the drivers... can reset the hard drive whenever it wants and is somehow getting it wrong...

If you are interested, let me know what you think...

Jason

 

[wnied]

Jason

Try to check the settings in your BIOS under power management. If they arent already, then set them to "User Define." This should solve the problem.

Let me know how you make out.
wnied

 

[chemos]

also, under control panel=>power, make sure "power down hard disk drives" is set to NEVER.

 

[jjsimas]

I've checked those things. BTW, I don't think it's a power thing. Only one drive shuts down at a time, and they are RAID 0 (Mirroring); so if one of them was to shutdown, both would, but at least one of them isn't.

So does anyone think that its the power supply -- not providing enough power to run all my stuff?

Is there a utility to determine how much power I'm using?

Thanks,
Jason

 

[jjsimas]

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[jjsimas]

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