Planetarion Forums - 2 Q's: [1] SATA II [2] Broadband Dropping

Androme · 14 Sep 2005, 18:26

[1]

Quote:

Hard Drives - Serial II ATA-300

SATA II - or Serial ATA-IO is a new technology replacing the IDE and SATA (I) connection on hard-drives. Apart from providing faster transfer speeds, SATA II drives also have the ability to "hot swap" ( remove and re-add while the system is still powered ) and with the thinner SATA II cables being only 1/4 of a inch thick - this helps with thermoregulation within the system. Not only is SATA faster than conventional IDE connections, it is also easier to setup as there is no master and slave scenario, each SATA device has the entire channel is itself. Not only that but with features such as staggered spin startup, NCQ and hot-plugging support, the newer generation of drives provide excellent performance. please note that serial ATA II does not guarantee transfers of 300 Mb/s

Can I use this in my PC set up then? I don't have any SATA support but I can get a SATA card thingy-ma-jig. I have 2 ATA133 Hard-Drives connected as primary master and secondary master and 1 DVD-ROM drive & 1 CD-RW connected to both IDE channels.

I basically want to replace my hard-drives - my main one is 120GB and my backup one is 40GB. I want to replace the 40GB drive with a 160GB/200GB drive and then copy the OS and all my files from the 120GB drive over to this new one and make the 120GB one now my backup drive if you understand what I mean. How would I go about doing this?

[2] Just signed up to Tiscali 2MB broadband all dandy really. As the RJ11 wire isn't long enough - the PC is upstairs and the only wall socket is downstairs, I have an extension phone line wire box running from my room to the downstairs socket see here. The filter is connected into this extension and so is a fax machine running from the office next door. The extension is connected downstairs into the main socket and the filter is then plugged into this end of the extension that goes into the wall see here. Now if I put the filter directly into the wall and then the extension and the phone landline downstairs into this filter, the broadband will come up with a no dial-tone error message when connecting but in the picture, this configuration allows it to work. It still works even without the filter downstairs (see last picture link).

What's annoying me is that after a phone call, it'll disconnect and won't reconnect coming up with a "no dial tone" message. If I leave it for a while after a phone call (receiving a phone call) and then connect it'll work. What's up with this doc?

Danke

Phil^ · 14 Sep 2005, 18:41

1) You can put sata into it but you cant just 'copy over' the hard disk in the way you describe really.
You need software which dumps the disk to the new one. merely copy-pasting wont do it
That said, i'd suggest you just reinstall windows and then copy over data from a dvd-rw backup.
One thing to check on is if your bios will boot from the sata drives on the extention card.

Personally - i'd get the sata card and use the sata drives in addition to the currently existing pata drives.
more storage - see

and it means you dont need to worry with copying drives over

2) I dont think you need all those filters plugged in. and it sounds like theres an awful lot of stuff using that line, you might want to ask BT to up the gain on it.
the downstairs filter is the one you dont need (imho)

My bet is that the gain just isnt high enough to 'power' all the devices on the line, given the number of times its split and extended.

Ask tiscali to do a line test - see if there are any other problems with it

Androme · 14 Sep 2005, 18:53

Cheers Phil

1) I don't want more than 2 drives as my case is quite small and crowded which means I have to have the side of the case off with about 5 fans in there to keep it cool (around 42-43*C under load) - 1 for the Hard-Drives, 1 at the rear, 3 on the side.

How do I check if my BIOS will boot from the SATA drive?

2) I just rang Tiscali and they said they did a comprehensive line test 2 days ago and found no problems at all. Guess I'll have to ring BT to up the gain on it

Phil^ · 14 Sep 2005, 18:58

um. im not terribly sure how you check tbh

put the sata card in, and a drive on it ,then check in bios for the boot order and see if the new drive appears as an option in it i guess is one way to check

One last resort would be to use the big pata drive as your primary boot ( ie you have windows installed on it ) and use the sata drive as storage.
thats one way to do it i guess

What sorta quality is the extention lead? that might be another cause for the signal dropping off ( which is what i presume is happening )

Typically, the gain on bt lines allows for 4 devices. Splitting the line decreases this .
each filter actually splits the line, as well as filtering it; therefore having lots on the line is unnecessary

Some modems / routers let you see all sorts of techy info about the line. for instance on my line, my router says :
ADSL Firmware Version: 4.01.00.00 - 1.01.00.00 - 1.01.00.00 Annex A - 01.06.06 - 0.49
Line State Connected
Modulation Multi-mode
Annex Mode ANNEX_A
Max Tx Power -38 dBm/Hz

Item Downstream Upstream Unit
SNR Margin 31 31 dB
Line Attenuation 16 16 dB
Data Rate 576 288 kbps

What precisely that means im not -entirely- sure. the Line attenuation i recon is the amount the signal is being degraded on the line, and the SNR ratio ( signal to noise ratio ) is how strong the signal is

If you can see similar techy info on your modem/router, have a look at the SNR ( if possible )
if its too low, then either the gain is too low, or the cables are crap

flapjack · 14 Sep 2005, 19:08

high SNR is good, it means you have a lot of signal and a little noise...

low SNR is bad, as you'll soon learn when you start walking around with a laptop with a Wlan card built in and SNR drops down low.
Line atttenuation sounds unfamiliar, I'm using a cable modem myself and I've never checked such things, I plugged it in and it worked, no questions asked.

If your data rate is in kilobit/s, it's pretty crap btw, 576 kilobit per second == 72kb/s

Phil^ · 14 Sep 2005, 19:10

I know. ive only got 512k adsl atm. Going to upgrade to 2mbit eventually but havent got around to it.

pablissimo · 14 Sep 2005, 19:47

Attenuation is how much the signal 'strength' drops off from one end of the line to the other. High attentuation means that a signal is 'quieter' at the other end of the line, and so harder to pick up (and more liable to be affected by line noise). Typically I think ADSL of around the 1meg mark needs attenuation lower than ~45dB and a SNR of >6dB to prevent the connection dropping randomly though they seem fairly arbitrary figures picked up from various DSL-related forums.

If things are going wrong when phonecalls are made, it sounds not impossibly like either you've a dodgy microfilter or that the fact that you're using an extension at all is a problem. General advice is that you plug your modem directly into the microfilter, and the microfilter directly into the master phone socket to avoid signal problems. Have you tried, just as a test, moving the PC downstairs and setting things up that way then testing if phone calls dick your connection up?

Androme · 14 Sep 2005, 23:09

I have a crappy SpeedTouch ADSL USB Modem (well it's not a modem is it in technical terms) and there's no option to check the SNR or the Attentuation - but soon we are going to have a wired router installed and a wireless card put into my sister's laptop so she can roam around the house wire-free. Until the router comes, I can't check the SNR and Attentuation as I've tried looking alas no luck.

Will this network further affect everything?

Cheers pab - I shall try it tomorrow when I get the time and let you know.

Androme · 15 Sep 2005, 07:15

ahhhhhhh! I'm also having another error pop-up --> 633: channel/device already in use or something along that line - it only goes away after i reboot the computer (and it comes up because the broadband line drops)

I checked out Microsoft but that hardly helps as I only have one Broadband connection on this computer.

this might fix it but my modem works... until it drops and trys reconnecting...

I was pointed here by Tiscali... great, so I have to reboot everytime... woohoo! ;o

Phil^ · 15 Sep 2005, 08:05

i had that modem once

theres a program which comes with it, speedtouch diagnostics - that lets you see some techy info from teh modem but i cant rememeber if theres anything which is helpful there or not.

the network shouldnt affect anything else - no.

as for the channel/device in use - thats odd. Not sure whats happening there

Androme · 18 Sep 2005, 11:38

I'm having problems with my router - it's all setup correctly - (BT Voyager 2000 Wireless - it's wired to my computer but my in my sister's laptop there's a wireless card so she can roam about) - after turning on the computer it will work all jiggy but randomly it'll just stop working although the router status page will say it's connected - at some point it'll be unable to even open the router page itself. If I disable the line and then renable (I've tried renew ipconfig but hasn't helped) it'll sometimes work tempoarily and then at some point even the router status page will hang and won't load. If I turn off the router and turn it back on, it'll work for a while and then the above problems come back in some shape or form. Then it's time for another computer bloody restart. I'm hardly being able to connect for that long.

At some point during that after the connection starts to hang, I disconnect the ADSL login within the router settings and reconnect, it'll keep going page to "BT Voyager is now ready to connect to ADSL" but never connect - however, if I click one of the other options and login, then go back to the page to connect (which also displays status of the connection) it's already connected to the ADSL account although when I tried connecting it wouldn't...?!!?!?!

The only Firewall I have is Zonealarm (up to date) and the firmware on the router is also up to date before you mention that but the problems persist. It recognises the LAN as a network and it's all configured correctly. I'm using Windows XP Home w/ SP2 installed.

EDIT: after just upgrading my firmware, I'm now getting a gateway connection in addition to the LAN connection (this gateway connection only appears when the LAN is connected...?!) - see here - I can't disconnect it though as it won't let me?!

If this helps, this is what I last got form my router page:

Line attenuation 24.5 dB
Noise margin 30 dB

Androme · 18 Sep 2005, 22:35

Also, I'm going to get BT to increase the gain on the signal when I get the time to ring them - I'm also thinking about getting an extension 10m RJ11 to RJ11 cable to extend from the router in my room to the phone socket downstairs (hence removing the need for the phone line extension) - from off eBay but I'm not sure whether it'd be a wise investment?