I’ve got a later model 5160 with an IBM WD25, and it’s knocking on heaven’s door. I assume that this massive full height drive with 4 platters uses a lot of power, but I cannot find any specs. Has anyone ran dual HDDs in a 5160? I’ve got a few ST-251 I could put in it. I know the 5170 specifically talks about two drives, so I assume it’s PSU is up to the task, but the 5160 is about 60 watts less.
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Will 5160 power supply allow replacing the WD25 with two ST-251?
- Thread starter jafir
- Start date
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Try it--hard drives consume the most power when spinning up. If both 251s don't spin up, you have your answer.
Once spinning, hard drives use less power, generally speaking. (and the ST-251 is not a massive drive in the world of ST506 interface drives. Try, say, a Maxtor XT2190). Drives use more power when seeking, but since this is a 5160, disk I/O is going to be single-threaded (i.e. your controller can't initiate seeks on two drives simultaneously).
Once spinning, hard drives use less power, generally speaking. (and the ST-251 is not a massive drive in the world of ST506 interface drives. Try, say, a Maxtor XT2190). Drives use more power when seeking, but since this is a 5160, disk I/O is going to be single-threaded (i.e. your controller can't initiate seeks on two drives simultaneously).
So there is little risk of letting the smoke out I guess? The only reason I’m trying to put two drive in anyway is so that the machine “looks pretty” and fills the hole left from the full height drive. I guess I could put a second floppy drive in and use the half-height spacer on the hdd side.
When I said massive, I was talking about the WD25, and I was only talking about it being full height. All of my other drives are much smaller physically, but the capacity is all pretty low.
When I said massive, I was talking about the WD25, and I was only talking about it being full height. All of my other drives are much smaller physically, but the capacity is all pretty low.
krebizfan
Veteran Member
I have seen XTs with 4 drives (two HH hard drives and two HH floppy drives) so I suspect yours will have no problem.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
You're not going to let smoke out--worst case is that the overcurrent protection will kick in on the PSU and you'll temporarily lose power. You'll then have your answer.
So everyone was right. No smoke and it did spin both drives.
What is everyone’s experience with spinrite?
I put the first drive in, I think it’s new, but it had been opened before I got it. It low level and DOS formatted without issues, so I went to add the second drive. It was still sealed in plastic with the original printout from Seagate with the tests and bad sector map. When I went to low level format it, I couldn’t even get it to complete. It had so many errors that if overflowed the buffer. I noticed that most of them were at the higher cylinders (up to 820). So I lied to the controller and said it only had 615 cylinders. It formatted with a few errors, and then fdisk and dos format competed. I ran spinrite and it put the drive through it’s paces and resolved pretty much all of the errors. Now I’ve low level formatted it again with the correct number of cylinders and it seems to be working 100% again. I guess that the drive just needed some exercise (and maybe some heat) to get everything working again.
What is everyone’s experience with spinrite?
I put the first drive in, I think it’s new, but it had been opened before I got it. It low level and DOS formatted without issues, so I went to add the second drive. It was still sealed in plastic with the original printout from Seagate with the tests and bad sector map. When I went to low level format it, I couldn’t even get it to complete. It had so many errors that if overflowed the buffer. I noticed that most of them were at the higher cylinders (up to 820). So I lied to the controller and said it only had 615 cylinders. It formatted with a few errors, and then fdisk and dos format competed. I ran spinrite and it put the drive through it’s paces and resolved pretty much all of the errors. Now I’ve low level formatted it again with the correct number of cylinders and it seems to be working 100% again. I guess that the drive just needed some exercise (and maybe some heat) to get everything working again.
Stone
10k Member
SpinRite is great for old MFM drives.
You don't need to reformat it after using SpinRite -- that's what SpinRite does -- a nondestructive LLF. It will format a drive with data on it and all the data will remain intact after the job is done.
You don't need to reformat it after using SpinRite -- that's what SpinRite does -- a nondestructive LLF. It will format a drive with data on it and all the data will remain intact after the job is done.
