Mobile rack HD issue

[digitalfog]

I bought a couple HD mobile racks and when I try to use it my system slows to an unuseable level. If I turn the drive off all is back to normal.

I have a Boxx dual opteron system with two internal SATA drives, a DVD/CD rewrite (this is set as slave)and then the HD rack (Drives set as master), these are connected on the IDE channel.

Do I need a driver for this to work or ???

Thanks

[Leoslocks]

You should not need a driver for this to work.

You might try setting both drives on the IDE channel to Cable Select and see how it works. Better, set each drive (DVD/CD) and HD on seperate IDE channels both set as Master or CS.

[Tuttle]

You know you have to turn the PC off when you want to switch the mobile rack on or off, right? They don't magically make a system hot-swappable.

Other than that, if the rack enclosure is faulty you can get all manner of strange symptoms[1]. It's worth opening the case and plugging the IDE and power cables directly into one of the drives, just to see what happens. If the problem then goes away, the rack is stuffed.

[1] Personal favourite -- machine was working perfectly, except that every second boot it would come up with the standard 16-colour 640x480 VGA display. Everything would still run, and if you rebooted things would go back to normal, but if you rebooted again it'd go back to VGA. Yup, 'twas the removable caddy.

[digitalfog]

Yes I realize that its not hot swappable, I always reboot when I try to access the drive. I will try changing both drives to CS to see if that works, I believe my MB only has one IDE channel, will check the docks to verify but I didnt see a second when looking under the hood. Thanks for the input. Ill post again if it doesnt work.

Cheers

[Tuttle]

Yes I realize that its not hot swappable, I always reboot when I try to access the drive.

You mean turn off, switch drives, turn on, right?

Swapping drives around while the machine is running and then expecting a reboot to fix things up isn't a good strategy.

[digitalfog]

Tuttle

Yes, Ill shut the system down, engage the lock on the drive, and turn machine on....and then the system is basically not useable. So Ill just unlock the drive and the system works fine, I havent tried switching the dvd drive and hd to CS as of yet....I'll have a go at it in the morning, I have had this particular HD functional in the system when it was connected directly to the IDE cable, if switching to cs doesnt work Ill reconnect the HD and see if the problem is duplicated....will post my findings after. thanks for the assistance.