Repaired System Worries

[EdElias]

Hello,

I started having problems with my Scan built system, there were power issues, the computer would crash, take a very long time to restart, and sometimes fail to load entirely, and then one of the hard drives in the RAID5 failed, not so much of an issue as this can be replaced and the RAID rebuilt. But soon after this the operating system drive, a 150GB Raptor drive, also failed causing the whole system to stop working.

No worries, Scan sent a guy to come and collect (we had a few problems with the citilink guy not turning up, but after a week of citilink being rubbish it was collected and sent to Scan). This was at the beginning of november, there was then 2 weeks when scan were unable to start the repair work for reasons i'm unaware (presumably very busy for the christmas run up) but anyway...

work has begun but every time something is fixed and the computer is ready for delivery i get a call saying its ready to go. a few hours later i get a call saying it wont be going out it's just crashed, and the engineer needs to rebuild something again.

This cycle of calling me and then it failing has got me worried. not because i dont like speaking to the scan guys they are always very helpful and friendly (i've been talking to a guy called Sanjay). but i've lost faith in the reliability of the system. How can i be sure that it wont crash the minute i get it home. The computer has been away for almost a month now, what can i do?!

Thanks
Ed.

[Philipp]

Hello EdElias

I am posting on behalf of pete as he carnt seem to get his hexus account working

"
Hi Ed,

My names Pete, and I’ve been the guy that's been working on your system for the couple of weeks.

I am aware that it's taken it's time coming back to you. I'd like to apologies for the time taken, and give you a complete breakdown of what and why.

The system was received back at the tail end of last month, and Ben dropped you a line to let you know it would be passed on to me the following week. It did get delayed a bit further, and I’d like to apologies for this myself. The's been a back log in the run up to xmas, and our support team lost one of it's key members a few months ago which has put us in a pretty tight spot. Sanjay is our new starter and is being trained up at the moment so I've been given some help to get on top of the workload at what is the busiest time of the year for us. I'm sorry that this impacted on me getting onto working on your system, but when I was sorting out my workload, I didn't think that your system would take half as long as it has done, which is an unfortunate misjudgment on my behalf.

The system when it came back had its raid drive swapped. After this swap it took about two and a half days to rebuild, which is pretty standard for a 750 gig raid 5 build. After that was done it spent a few days doing stability testing and the raptor drive was also changed. This was where we dropped you the first call saying that the system should be ready to come back before that weekend. I had some issues cloning the drive through and we ended up having to set you up a new O/S partition and clone across your program partition. It was tested again but I made the mistake of not setting the raid drives back up straight away after installing the O/S partition. Normal practice is to set up the O/S drive on a separate controller than the raid, but when I said to Sanjay when he asked me in the afternoon what systems should be fine to leave the building (and I told him yours) I set everything back up as it should be and the raid didn't work. The board you have didn't allow me to set the o/s and raid drives up on separate controllers and I didn't allow for this when I installed the o/s drive. When you set up windows if you have a raid then you have to install a raid driver to use it. As it was a single drive I looked at it, and didn't think I would need to use that driver, so didn't install it. This meant that when I plugged the raid in it blue screened and crashed. This was a mistake on my behalf, as I haven't seen a configuration in quite a while that would cause that, and I should have realized.

The system was resoftwared again and I ran further checks on all the drives that were in there. The raid did drop again on a day I expected it to ship and it was delayed once more for a rebuild that took another 3 days.

I narrowed this down to the sata cables being used and the fact that they were twisted in a way that may be causing data corruption (the tracks in the cables can develop stress fractures over time if bent back on themselves (this is something we've discovered over the last year)). These were changed today and I’ve cabled tied them in the other direction and adjusted the cables to one's with better clips, so they should now be rock solid and they don't have any tight curves in them, so should prove to be fine for years to come.

In it's time here, we've changed the two drives which were indeed faulty. We lost a week on a couple of raid rebuilds, which is whilst it has delayed it further, it has meant that you do still have your raid 5 and data safe.

The has been a few false starts in getting it back to you, and it has been delayed all round. Once again can I apologize for this, but my priority has been to ensure the safety of as much data of yours as I can in it's time here (and with exception of your small o/s partition it was successful) and after the checking it's had over the last week, I am sure that the system will meet with your approval when it returns to you tomorrow.

If you do need any help on its return please phone Sanjay or Ben, or feel free to drop me a pm/mail and we'll endeavor to do our best.

Pete G
3XS System Repairs.
"

Best Regards

[EdElias]

Pete,

My thanks for a very comprehensive and satisfactory response. You guys always impress

That is excellent news about the Sata cables, i had had my suspiscions about those causing some troubles after we had some drive failure problems about a year ago. Thanks for saving the data!

Thanks again. I look forward to receiving it.
Ed.

[Disturbedguy]

This shows great customer service and professional ism imo.

First of all the comprehensive report as to what was done and second the fact that they did the best they could to keep all the data you, some companies wouldnt of done that.

Well Done SCAN

[Couger]

wow thats awesome, I know where to come if i ever need a system building for me,

Really impressed top notch Scan

[EdElias]

Hello,

I collected the computer yesterday from the couriers. Plugged it in, working fine. excellent work, thanks.

I didnt get the chance to do much with it yesterday, so i turned it off, this morning i turn it on, and the the RAID is degraded (one drive is missing from the list) and the operating system drive is also missing from the hard drive check on start up.

obviously it now doesnt load windows or do anything now.

This is exactly the same problem i sent it to you guys with and i dont understand how it can work fine one day and then rubbish the next.

I'm really very disappointed.

Ed.

[GoNz0]

i have random issues where a sata cable seems to lose contact, thery really are one of the worst designed connections i have ever come across, if there is any tension on the cable it can cause a fault, it may be worth sticking your head in and having a fiddle to see if the array comes back?

[EdElias]

Now i definately dont understand, i pulled out the raptor drive power cable, plugged it in again, rebooted and the whole system is up and running again.

what is going on?

[EdElias]

Hey Gonzo, i had been trying that with no luck, but as my post above says, for some reason it worked this time. i'm very confused.

[Giraffe]

Now i definately dont understand, i pulled out the raptor drive power cable, plugged it in again, rebooted and the whole system is up and running again.

what is going on?

Check the SATA power cable very carefully. Mine is such that I have to slide in the drives a little way before the second power cable will go on, then have to try and check that it's still on (and the data cable) when the drives are in place; I have big hands, so not easy to do.
Now, I couldn't figure out why there was a problem. Took out the drives to make sure that the connectors were OK and found that 1 of the power connectors had split. The very thin plastic had cracked away at the end (it's much too weak for the rather stiff wires to it).
This meant, of course, that the connectors inside weren't making contact.
Managed to get a Molex-to-2-SATA jobby from Maplin :-(. Also, fortunately, the older HD has both types on it.

[Kaine]

Hi Edward,

You'll have to excuse me for posting under a personal account. My scan one still isn't authorized for posting within the forums.

Whilst I was first working on it, the was a point where the drives didn't detect in the same manor. It was a loose sata power lead at the time (as Giraffe above has pointed out) which can be a common occurence due to how the cables have to be coiled due to the lack of space available between drives. When it was pushed back on it connected and worked fine and I did swap the power cable arm as a precaution at the time. I then put the machine through a rebooter sequence with the drives detected fine each time, even if the system was moved about in the process.
The should be a spare power arm included with the original system parts and it maybe worth swapping this in quickly (try and use another power connector on the modular psu in case cable tension has done anything to affect it during transit) and this should resolve the issue.

Pete,
3XS Systems.

[Giraffe]

Kaine,

How about Scan stocking Molex to SATA power connectors with a right-angle SATA end? There are SATA data connectors like this.
Or, of course, some connectors with thicker plastic.

[PeteG@Scan]

(In case anyone is wondering I'm going for the record of most Alias's used within a single thread! This is my newly activated scan account through )

Giraffe,

Your right mate. We really should be carrying stock of those sort of connectors. The get shipped with certain motherboards (I think with the strikers) and a few other items, so I'm sure we could source them separately from somewhere. The are PSU's designed like this (I think some of the Enermax's do this) and they do make installation more effective when working with drive bays which have been rotated to face out of the case side (and they don't allow for much clearance in these case's). I'll forward this suggestion up to our buying team and see what they can come up with.

Cheers.
Pete.
3XS Systems.

[Giraffe]

Thanks Pete.

The other thing that'd be useful (for one of your reasons above), is 3-connector IDE ribbons/leads (flexible ones) that are reversible and 90cm - 1m, with about 30/60 split. It takes a lot of cable to get between an optical drive near the top and a HDD near the base!

[PeteG@Scan]

Have you tried one of the 90cm cables we already do?

ln 16550 ( Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK ) has about 30 cm clearance between the two end ide connectors. This is enough to run from the top ide bay right down to the middle of the harddrive cage at the bottom on both the TJ o7 and the Akasa Mirage which are both quite large case's and may prove suitable.

I haven't acturly seen a cable like you mentioned being available before. It's strange as I can see the being use's for such an item and i'm sure the's some being made somewhere in the world. If you've spotted them anywhere else, drop me a line and i'll see if we can get them added to our range, as no doubt they'd prove useful to more than a few people.

[Giraffe]

Thanks for the link.

How flexible is it?
I see that the mobo end has the long part attached, so OK for 2 optical drives but not to get up/down the case.