Ok, am here on dsl disk, no hard drives in pc at moment. I have been having hard drive issues since I started using super racks. I have two racks in this pc both on the same ide ribbon. They both worked fine when I first got them (something like 5 months ago). In a short time, the slave started making crazy noise. The only way I can describe it is like when you have a cassette tape on fast forward and the tape breaks, then the tape goes into super high speed fast forward due to no resistance and loud vibrating noises. (Hopefully that is descriptive, talking to workmates about vinyl records is sometimes met with, "I have never seen one!) The drive would sometimes register, sometimes be not found. Ended with rapid clicking noise. Seemed to happen to any hd I put in that rack. Swapped that rack for a new one. Still did it. That new hard drive also is now unusable. Second new hd that this was happening to, pulled and put in my external usb enclosure and it is fine there. At that point thought it might be a power issue with my crap power supply and the duel fans the super racks have. Replaced power supply with an expensive one, did not change rack problem. Stopped using the slave rack, and only used the master. Tonight it has started with the master (super rack) as well. So now am only able to run on live cd's till I have time to pull racks and try hd's plugged directly into the ide ribbon. Most frusterating. Anybody have any theories, or any experience with the super racks by ViPower. I have no idea what is going on, just started to question the racks as that is three hd's gone haywire since I have started using the racks. Two of them being brand new, one of those working fine after pulling from rack and putting in external usb enclosure.

200gig Western Digital = dead
300gig Seagate = dead in rack, ok in usb external
40gig Western Digital = dead in rack tonight, autopsy to be done on weekend (see if ok out of rack)

Use a voltmeter that has high resistance (40 megaohm or more) and check the voltage levels when turning on and while running the hard drives. Power supplies have to provide about 1% voltage regulation for computer devices. Hard drives put a huge strain on power supplies, so I suggest using a timing scheme to turn each hard drive after 5 seconds of the previous hard drive. You have to tell your system to wait about 15 to 20 seconds until all the hard drives are running to full speed.

IDE hard drives are not designed to work 24/7. Also you can NOT remove them while they are on especially when they are on the same cable. You have to completely shutdown the computer and remove the failed drive. If you want hot-swappable, use a SATA controller from 3ware.

If I had to make an array of hard drives, I buy a dual voltage power supply from Jemeco Electronics that has an active PFC and wide input voltage range. Power supply wattage that I would get is two times the power of all the hard drives in the array. Then I would buy 16 guage or 14 gauge wire and molex connectors to hook up the hard drives.

I appreciate your input. I think my long winded explanation made things unclear. I only run these as a master slave config. Only because I like to have separate hard drives for different operating systems. Never swap them except when machine is powered off. Since installing a new "premium" power supply, have only ever ran the master with the slave slot empty. Last drive that started screaming was a loner (no slave). Also I never run my pc 24/7, always shut it down when I am not home unless I am running a live image in ram like I am now, with no hard drives installed.

Finally got around to opening pc last night. Disconnected the super racks, and connected the 40gig drive as master and the dead 200 gig drive as slave directly to the ide cable. Low and behold, both work. The 40 gig with operating systems worked, and the 200gig drive that not only was making screaming noise but ended in constant loud clicking while inside super rack, works too (it had lost its formatting and had to reformat). It seems I just managed to buy two bad super racks at the same time. I had bought a third super rack thinking that was the problem when the first drive died in one, same results. I now have three sitting in the closet. Maybe it was just a bad batch. I suppose it can happen. Oh well, racks were only $17 a piece, better them be dead than the hard drives. So, turns out all my hard drives are actually ok.

Sorry, I did not do any research before posting. I use mobile hard drive racks from SanMax because I had to buy an insert for a class. They work well, so I am using them for my computers. The brand and model that I am using is SanMax PMD-96I. After two years using them, they still work.

Apology not needed. I checked out your SanMax PMD-96I racks, and they are almost identical. Only difference is you have one cooling fan side mounted in chassis, mine have one in back of chassis and one in front of the removable drive bay. Not sure if the extra fan caused this or what, I did upgrade to a Okia 600w aluminum gamer power supply in the middle of the mess so doubt it. Guess I'll keep on the lookout for the Sanmax name, thanks Electro.

Ok not sure if this thread is still alive, and if your still about Lakota, but my Mobile rack has done the same thing that mine has.

Ive got a few explanations for the problems.
That loud noisy grinding noise is the fans. I took my front fan out when the noise first started, then the second one went months later and i just ripped it out. No more noise.

Now remember how you thought you'd killed your hdd with the rack but then when you checked later it worked?? Thats because from what i can gather the hdd gets put into a raid config in order for the hotswap to work.

When you try to plug the hdd directly into the computer it wont register at all, but will run fine in the mobile rack.

Im searching for a programmed that will remove the raid config from my hdd so it can be used properly


Email me @ syntax_x@tpg.com.au