On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Stroller <strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote: > > On 26 Mar 2010, at 22:21, Paul Hartman wrote: >> >> ... >> Well, I was thinking more about something like alteriong IOH/ICH >> voltage, or whichever voltage powers the SATA controllers. It has 12 >> SATA headers on this motherboard but I don't know how much it can >> realistically handle at once. Hopefully all of my disks. :) > > Honestly, I'm not sure that I'd do that. > > If I thought it was a power issue - and that seems quite a reasonable > possibility - I would replace the PSU first. > > What PSU are you using at the moment? Brand / wattage? > > I think these are probably overkill: > > http://www.bluepoint.net/AKAPSU066 > http://www.bluepoint.net/AKAPSU071 > > However, if you're using a 450W PSU at the moment, you can get an OCZ > branded 600W for less than £50. I tend to be suspicious of cheap unbranded > and Wong Fu 350W - 450W PSUs. Often a 350W PSU from a manufacturer with a > half-decent brand (eg Trust) will be better than a no-name 450W PSU. > > It seems important not only the actual wattage that the PSU gives out > (measured with an analogue-needle multimeter) but also how stable that > voltage is, how smooth, consistent and reliable it is. Unless your PSU is > absolute top-notch quality, try to under-utilise it. > > With 6 x hard-drives, I would be generous with supplying power - I think a > 600W PSU would easily be justified. > > Stroller. >
I have a 750W Corsair 750TX which should be plenty (if not overkill). Seems to have all the bells and whistles (though I wish I had bought the modular version). I definitely agree about the cheap no-name PSUs, I've seen some USD$10 ones go up in smoke after just a few minutes of use. Based on the little info I could find Googling it seems the most likely explanations are: IRQ handling weirdness (but that was more probable in older motherboards and kernels) ahci driver issues (I will reboot with the controllers in "legacy" mode to use the non-ahci drivers and see what happens) a bad drive, bad cable, bad controller, bad sector, something physically bad. Overnight I copied several hundred gigs of data (and still going) and the error has not been reproduced. Before installing, I did a full SMART test (a few hours) and a badblocks read-only test (even more hours) and neither showed any errors. I did not do a full read/write test, though. I haven't heard any unexpected noises coming from the drives (no clicks of doom), though I have so many fans going it may be hard to hear. Thanks.
