I have a mac cube that ran fine for about a year and the hd failed so I put a drive I pulled. this drive worked for a couple of months and it started having problems it would spool up the wind down to a stop, start stop over and over it was about 2 sec up and 2 sec down. so i ordered a new drive from owc and put it in worked ok for about a week and the same thing started spool up and down. What could be the issue power supply?
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cube hard drive issues
- Thread starter madmann
- Start date
phreakout
Well-known member
What are the GB sizes of the drives in the order that you replaced them?
It is possible that there isn't enough electrical power to run the drives or there is a problem with the power connector going into the drives or the drives themselves.
Check with a voltmeter to see that you have 5Vdc and 12Vdc running through that cable.
Check to make sure you have a secure connection and no shorts.
It is possible the drives themselves were all bad, defective or such with that type of symptom. But it's happening with all the drives. Run Disk Utility or Tech Tool Pro or some king of drive utility app to make sure the drives are truly okay.
73 de Phreakout.
It is possible that there isn't enough electrical power to run the drives or there is a problem with the power connector going into the drives or the drives themselves.
Check with a voltmeter to see that you have 5Vdc and 12Vdc running through that cable.
Check to make sure you have a secure connection and no shorts.
It is possible the drives themselves were all bad, defective or such with that type of symptom. But it's happening with all the drives. Run Disk Utility or Tech Tool Pro or some king of drive utility app to make sure the drives are truly okay.
73 de Phreakout.
Unknown_K
Well-known member
Check the power connector for cracks in the solder to the pcboard. Check the voltage at the drive under load if possible or atleast check to see if there is a voltage dip when running somewhere else. It could be the HD has overheated and now is running funky (does the drive work well in another machine, run a diagnostic on it to see if internal diagnostics have tripped).
well I have checked the voltages and no issues the cube ran fine last nite. The day before the drive just stoped and then the machine did not boot ie no hard drive. May be the dc to dc board is over heating. This has happened with 2 hd's now. I am tring to get it to fail while I have a meter on it. Both the 12 v and 5 v looks fine when it is operating correctly. once the machine cools off it starts up just fine.
johnklos
Well-known member
Some newer hard drives are low power 5900 RPM drives. I've started buying only LP because the power consumption is about 1/3 of a typical 7200 RPM drive they're replacing. For instance, an array with ten 2 terabyte drives now takes about 65 watts in continuous use, whereas when the array had ten 1.5 terabyte 7200 RPM drives, it took around 175 watts.
I'm not sure what kind of low power IDE drives you can find, but in the systems I have which require IDE, I've been using SATA-IDE adapters which cost around $15 USD. Then you can get, for instance, a new 500 gig low power SATA drive for $50 USD, and you'll be drawing much less power.
If you could get it to fit in the Cube, that'd be a good way to draw less power, generate less heat, and get lots of space. You will have to use something like the ATA Hi-Capacity driver to access the partition set up from 128 gigs -> the rest of the drive, but it's worth it.
I'm not sure what kind of low power IDE drives you can find, but in the systems I have which require IDE, I've been using SATA-IDE adapters which cost around $15 USD. Then you can get, for instance, a new 500 gig low power SATA drive for $50 USD, and you'll be drawing much less power.
If you could get it to fit in the Cube, that'd be a good way to draw less power, generate less heat, and get lots of space. You will have to use something like the ATA Hi-Capacity driver to access the partition set up from 128 gigs -> the rest of the drive, but it's worth it.
Byrd
Well-known member
The spin up/spin down issues you are experiencing suggest a flaky DC board; check the CubeOwner forums for more information on this. While you're at it, check the PRAM battery and replace this too if it reads a marginal voltage - crazy things can happen if not.
A 3.5" SATA drive doesn't fit once you've added the necessary adapter, so you need to do some significant modification for this. A 2.5" SATA drive on the other hand might be the go with the required adapter - it should fit OK.
JB
A 3.5" SATA drive doesn't fit once you've added the necessary adapter, so you need to do some significant modification for this. A 2.5" SATA drive on the other hand might be the go with the required adapter - it should fit OK.
JB
H3NRY
Well-known member
Take the VRM (DC-DC board) out and clean the contacts. While it's out, look for evidence of overheating. If anything looks scorched, you probably should replace it. Check the rest of the chassis & heat sinks for dust, etc. since Cubes are marginally cooled unless you add a fan. If you've upgraded your cube, check that the fan is still working. Unplug the DVD drive's power connector and see if it's failed and overloading the 5V & 12V supplies. It seems unlikely that 3 drives would fail so quickly.
Another possibility is that the power supply brick is failing. These are getting old enough that some of them are getting flaky. It should be putting out a steady 28V DC.
Check the disk drive topics on www.cubeowner.com, which is THE place for cube and early G4 info.
Another possibility is that the power supply brick is failing. These are getting old enough that some of them are getting flaky. It should be putting out a steady 28V DC.
Check the disk drive topics on www.cubeowner.com, which is THE place for cube and early G4 info.
