On 18 Sep 2009 01:38:09 GMT, Arno put finger to
keyboard and composed:
Yousuf Khan wrote:
[...]
I had previously suspected the IDE cables to be the culprits, so I did
change them, but that didn't help any at that time. So at that point I
began suspecting the drive itself was getting old (which it is). Looks
like now that it's going through SATA cables instead of IDE ones, that
the cables were the culprit, even with the newer IDE cables. I'm not
sure if this is endemic to IDE cables in general, or if it was just two
bad IDE cables in a row.
Yousuf Khan
Well, it is nice that the problem went away, but I frankly cannot
imagine any way an IDE cable would be responsible. Did you change or
at least unplug/replug the power connections? Bad power
connections can cause spin problems as especially old drives
draw a lot of power on spindle startup.
Arno
I agree. There seems to be no plausible causal relationship between a
faulty data cable and a spin retry issue. It would be a bit like
blaming a flat tyre on a flat battery.
I'd be watching and comparing other SMART attributes, eg ...
201 C9 Soft Read Error Rate (Number of off-track errors)
207 CF Spin High Current (Amount of surge current used to spin up the
drive)
208 D0 Spin Buzz (Number of buzz routines needed to spin up the drive
due to insufficient power)
209 D1 Offline Seek Performance (Drive’s seek performance during its
internal tests)
This article attempts to explain the SMART attributes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R....T._attributes
Here are the OP's previous data:
C9 *vendor-specific * * * * * * * * * *0 * *253 *252 * * * * * 1
CF *vendor-specific * * * * * * * * * *0 * *224 *207 * * * * *23
D0 *vendor-specific * * * * * * * * * *0 * *253 *252 * * * * * 0
D1 *vendor-specific * * * * * * * * * *0 * *241 *241 * * * * 154
If the OP is handy with a multimeter, he may be able to measure the
actual startup current by locating the current sense resistors for the
spindle motor and measuring the voltage across them.
In Seagate drives that employ an ST Microelectonics "SMOOTH" spindle
motor and voice coil motor (VCM) combo controller chip, there will be
five parallel connected 1R00 (1.00 ohm) resistors. The four 1R00
resistors sense the VCM current.
Here is a datasheet for an L7250 controller:
http://wandrew.regruppa.ru/PCInfo/Te...50(Smooth).pdf
I believe this may be the OP's PCB:
http://www.tux-tech.ca/images/logo/pcb.jpg
The spindle motor current sensing resistors appear to be R512, R511,
R510, ...
- Franc Zabkar
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