Hard drives causing boot failure

[greengolftee87]

I am trying to build a cheap file server from what parts i already have and so far so good with two exceptions.

1) all my hard drives are either IDE or external. In the computer is the system drive and 1 250G drive on the same IDE cable. I would like to replace the two optical drives with IDE hard drives as well but when i put them in the computer would not boot. This is true for all possible cases when there are 3 or more drives connected to the computer in ANY way, including external. Can the other IDE cable handle 2 more drives and why would these, or an external, cause boot failure.

2) All the sharing is using smb but our lan caps our bandwith at 11.5 Mb/s. So even though all computers are connected at 100 Mb/s i cant break the 11.5 barrier. My solution was to use my own router, a linksys wireless b (all hardwired though), but then even when all computers claim connection at 100, i cant break 10. Does smb sharing have some kind of limit or am i going about this the wrong way.

 

[Dangman]

- What are the specs of this file server? Be very specific on the motherboard and power supply
- How are the external drives connected? eSATA or USB?

 

[Canon]

I couldn't say for sure but you may be running into power issues while running all of those drives (not enough power from the PSU). I would try plugging in only the power cables (don't plug in the IDE ribbon cable) and see what happens. If it doesn't boot, that could be the issue. The other thing that can happen is if you put an IDE cable (that isn't keyed, many modern cables are) in backwards it can prevent the computer from posting (black screen) in my experience, check cable orientation, try a new IDE cable.

As for your speed question, this is because network speed is measured in Magabits per second and not Megabytes per second. Have a quick look at this Wikipedia article and I suspect you will find it will make a bit more sense:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbit/s

 

[greengolftee87]

- What are the specs of this file server? Be very specific on the motherboard and power supply
- How are the external drives connected? eSATA or USB?

Wow, thanks for the fast responses!
Ok, so im currently at home for the night and said computer is at school. The computer is an older sony vaio with stock psu. However i dont know if the psu is the issue here because during my random testing of what works what doesnt i booted the computer, put it to sleep, sneakily plugged in a third internal drive, then woke it up and it was there, but upon reboot i got nothing. I am wondering if this is an issue with the BIOS?

Im still kind of confused on the network thing but I am certain im doing something wrong cause my speeds drop when i switch to my own router without any speed limitations.

 

[greengolftee87]

Ok so I have some more info now. The motherboard is a asus p4sd-vx and the power supply is delta electronics 300W. I also have an additional 380W psu on hand for testing and such.

Another interesting fact: even though the floppy drive is long gone it shows up. as does an extra optical drive. So My Computer is showing a floppy and optical drive that arent there.
Could Vista be the problem here, I believe i have xp or server around somewhere but that wont fix the boot issue.

And i double checked that my IDE cables werent in backwards too

 

[Dangman]

Ok so I have some more info now. The motherboard is a asus p4sd-vx and the power supply is delta electronics 300W. I also have an additional 380W psu on hand for testing and such.

Ewwww Delta Electronics.... Delta Electronics does make some pretty crappy PSUs. Who is the manufacturer of that 380W PSU? If it's Antec or Seasonic, use that 380W PSU instead. See if it resolves your boot problem.

NOTE: I said Delta Electronics, not Delta. Delta makes good to excellent quality PSUs (look at Antec's Delta made SG850 and EA650 PSUs)

 

[greengolftee87]

Ewwww Delta Electronics.... Delta Electronics does make some pretty crappy PSUs. Who is the manufacturer of that 380W PSU? If it's Antec or Seasonic, use that 380W PSU instead. See if it resolves your boot problem.

NOTE: I said Delta Electronics, not Delta. Delta makes good to excellent quality PSUs (look at Antec's Delta made SG850 and EA650 PSUs)

haha ewwwww. Well I tried both psu's and I updated the BOIS to the latest released version. Still no luck. If 3 hard drives are plugged in when its off, then its turned on, it freezes and the "sony" screen. Im at a total loss here on whats happening

 

[coo-coo-clocker]

Might be a master/slave issue.
On your mobo, are there two ide channels? If so, you might want to try this:
channel 1: master/slave (drives 1 and 2)
channel 2: master/slave (drives 3 and 4)

try this in increments and see if it gets you any further in booting up...

 

[greengolftee87]

Might be a master/slave issue.
On your mobo, are there two ide channels? If so, you might want to try this:
channel 1: master/slave (drives 1 and 2)
channel 2: master/slave (drives 3 and 4)

try this in increments and see if it gets you any further in booting up...

This i wiill try, I didnt know that you could have 2 masters regardless of what channel they are coming from. Though i dont see how this would apply to a USB external also causing the problem.

After telling the sony tech support people that there was no way I would ever pay for phone support they talked to me for free and came up with the conclusion that it cant be done. Why they said this I dont know. The online chat people actually said that the computer didnt support adding any drives but i could replace the system drive. Shows what he knew.

if one day I decided that i wanted to expand my internal capacity with sata drives and bought a pci controller do you think that drives added to that would cause a boot error too?