Anilrgowda

Lately there has been a lot of Power Supply issues and HDD problems that members here have been experiencing. So this (hopefully) will serve as a guide for Some of the Novice PC builders we have here. Of course they can always post
for some help.


Hard Disk Drives- handling, installing advice

The HDD is the only mechanical (besides the optical drive) in your system that is gonna be containing your system's data. So be careful when transporting, installing, and even sometimes holding your HDD.
- From the time your at the store make sure you absolutely are sure what type of drive your gonna want/need before you take it off the shelf. Always place it in your cart carefully. Make sure it's not gonna suffer any unwanted vibrations from the time its placed in your cart. to the time it is installed in your rig ( i recommend using thumb screws when installing the drive in the 3.5in bay. there easy to use and provide a firm grip on the component. Remeber these platters in the HDD itself spin at a high rate (5400rpm - 10,000 rpm) so securing them properly in your case is VERY VERY important. you dont want the component to die early.

- Purchasing the right drive.
Todays applications need decent performance from a HDD, since this is the device that will be loading the application into your system memory to be processed by your CPU. Noone likes a sluggish HDD. You wanna pick out a disc that displaysan RPM speed of at least 7200(this is the mainstream standard for most drives)
and an 8MB cache (Hard drives have a cache built in to hold data that is being written to or read from the hard disk. The purpose of doing so tries to reduce the number of occasions in which data has to be physically written and read from the hard disk platter. By retaining recent data within the cache performance is increased as this memory is much faster and saves time on repeat recalls)
so 8mb is a decent amount for any mid to high end performance machine that is being built.

- Make sure that when installing your HDD ( whether it is gonna be an upgrade or a new one) Map out how your cable placement is gonna go. you wanna provide some cooling for the drive itself so you wanna place your cables to allow decent airflow. Because, although they don't generate as much heat as the CPU,Video card, or the northbridge chip on the chipset. The platters can and will warp, causing a head to crash and destroy the platter(s) themselves. If not properly cooled. I always recommend a case that can enable you to install 2 case fans on the front for some decent intake (a good PSU is recommended )
side intake fans also helps in this.

- If your gonna want more than a single HDD in your system make sure there one bay space apart from eachother in the case. Doing so will allow airlflow between them, rendering them to run at a cooler temperature. Never ever place them right on top of eachother doing so will reduce the life of your drives over a period of time. You may not experience in the short run but if you access both drives alot (especially if there in a RAID config) then they are gonna go out faster.

- Multiple HDD's.
When installing more than one HDD it is important to setup the master/slave configurations. you "Windows" drive should be set as "Master" second drive should set as slave. With this information you need to refer to the "jumper" settings(a diagram on this is printed on the drive itself)

IDE Hard drives- Windows drive is gonna be setup as Master on the Primary IDE channel this channel is indicated on the board itself, usually blue or green in color.
The IDE cable is gonna be used in a specific, recommended manner. The colored end of the cable Should go into the matching Channel(primary ) The windows drive is gonna be placed above the secondary drive(storage drive) in the case.
Storage drive needs to be setup as "Slave" and placed below the primary drive in the case (remember ONE bay space apart) this is will be installed in the middle part of the cable. ( refer to the image)


SATA HDD's- the next generation
- SATA is the next setep in the evolution of Pc HDD interfaces. these differ in IDE drives in the fact that: They cannot be chained on a single cable. One to a cable. And that they have a "Transfer rate" of 150mb/s

(Sustained vs. Burst Transfer Rates)

(Sustained transfers refer to a continued transfer that does not occur from the drive cache. Burst rates refer to data transferred directly to/from the high speed cache. A true indicator of performance is sustained rate; however, most drives are advertised with their faster burst rate.

A typical ATA/100(IDE) hard drive bursts at about 100MB/sec from the cache, but has a sustained rate of about 26-42MB/sec, depending on the drive. If you consider a best-case scenario with the 2MB cache full of data, 100MB/sec will quickly deplete the cache and commence transferring at the lower sustained rate.

ATA/66 hard drives are typically less expensive and do not saturate the 66MB/sec bandwidth available. In fact, a hard drive with a sustained transfer rate of 26MB/sec will not even saturate available ATA/33 bandwidth.

In summary, sustained transfer rates should be considered over burst transfer rates for maximum hard drive performance.)


- Transporting your case to LAN parties.
Always take the uppermost precautions when transporting your unit to a get together, make sure your system is placed in a asfe location in your vehicle that will not be exposed to any bump(s) that you may come across on the road. (Check for pot holes )


Power Supply Units(a.k.a the PSU)- finding the Right wattage for your needs.

- When building your system You wanna kinda map out your plans. And figure out how many components are gonna be in your system. AND if your gonna be adding/ upgrading(more power hungry device(s) ).

- Bundled PSU's are 8/10, a cheapo. There OK if you're gonna be building a basic,budget word processing system for you Aunt Martha. But for any Hardcore or any gaming rig ( who wants to run the latest game engines) A seperate PSU should be purchased(provided that you love the particular case and can't get it without the PSU). Purchase a PSU manufactured from a reputable company, Antec, Enermax, PC power & cooling. Are some great companies and make really dependable units.

- When installing your PSU always make sure not to half ass the job and place the unit in it's proper place using ALL the screws it needs. DONT be in a hurry to build your rig.

- Always purchase a unit that contains DUAL fans this helps in the removal of hot, out going air from your case. Especially after the CPU heatsink and fan removes the heat from your Intel or AMD processor. It has to go somewhere it cannot remain in your case.

- Cable management is also very important for a PSU as well. The less air flow restriction the cooler your components are gonna be.

Thank you for your time on reading this advise

IanH

Hi Anilrgowda. Perhaps you can help me or maybe you have seen my post elsewhere:

Has anyone any experience with or knowledge of the firewire 800 (IEEE 1393b) PCI-interface cards on a PC.
I have tried 2 of them: Adaptec Fireconnect 8300 kit, AVlab 800 PCI card. Neither of these have worked on my system: K8T800-A MOBO with AMD64 3000+ cpu

The adaptec has no driver so it goes down to IEEE 1394 speeds (Firewire 400) and the AVlab has the Orangeware driver but still drops to Firewire 400 speeds. Someone suggested that the cards require a 64 bit PCI interface and certainly the cards have more pins than connect onto my PCI interface. Besides the speed problem they both have problems handling my devices, an HP optical (firewire 400) and a Lacie Hard drive (firewire 800), in fact when I went to repartition the HD with PQ Partition magic I corruptd the drive and couldnt read anything on it until I re-connected it via USB2. I then had to re-partition the drive under USB2. To check and see if this was some obsure software error I repeated the process and again got the same errors and corruption under on the firewire card (Avlab). What I would like to find is anyone who is using firewire 800 succesfully on a PC. If so how?

IanH

Sorry I had a question related to your post too. I have the following in my system, which has a 350 watt psu. (is it under powered and the possible source of some of my problems):
2 seagate SATA drives, 1 IDE drive, 1 Lite-On optical drive, 1 floppy, 1 M-audio sound card, 1 firewire card, (2 or 3 devices attached one of which draws power from the bus), ATI graphics card with 256Mb and 2 monitors attached, 2Gb ram, and usually 3 USB2 devices attached (1 of which draws power from the USB). The mobo has AMD 64 3000+ cpu.
I would appreciate your judgement on this. Thanks