Icy box users - How is LED wired?

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Dave R Smith
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Joined: May 10 2005

I've just bought an 'ICY Box' hard drive caddy and 2 * maxtor 300GB HDD's (formatting as I type this note).

I've connected with the SATA cable - no problem.

The Icy box has an additional LED connector, but the 'German into English' instructions which are minimal don't make sense.

There are 3 connectors
(A)Black 2 pin female with wire to
(C)Black 1 pin female.
(B)white 2 pin male (approx 7mm by 5mm plastic shroud.

Instructions say connect 'B' to Icy box - but I think this should say 'C'.
It says:
' A goes to 'HDD access on mainboard (white="-").'
Presumably means motherboard - but where?

For C it says:
'with cable of your computer housing knows the HDD LED'

Any idea what this means?
If you can tell me where to connect these wires, I'd appreciate it.

I'm guessing the HDD LED is for information and not functional as it's formatting without it.

harlequin
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Joined: Aug 16 2000

all leds are functioning only as indicators.
you don't need them , they just help us work out what is going on.

'a goes to '..... it will be marked hdd led on the motherboard , but , that is probably already wired to the main cases hdd led anyway ..... so not needed.

i'll see if i can work out the rest later

Gary MacKenzie

sepulce@hotmail.com ( an account only used for forum messages )

Thinkserver TS140 , 750ti Graphics card  & LG 27" uws led backlight , Edius 8

Humax Foxsat HD Pvr / Humax Fox T2 dvbt

Dave R Smith
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Joined: May 10 2005
harlequin wrote:
'a goes to '..... it will be marked hdd led on the motherboard , but , that is probably already wired to the main cases hdd led anyway ..... so not needed.

Thank-you Gary.

I have found the HDD LED connectors now and as you anticipate they are already occupied.

In use, I was expecting the LED to flicker when that particular drive is being written to, but from the wiring I see it means it will probably flicker when ANY drive is being written to.

If this is the case, the LED is pointless, I won't bother with it.
Also with the other HDD LED connections blocking further use, their doesn't seem any point in checking the other connections, so I won't take up you time on this aspect.

Formatting now just completed - approx 90 mins to do 300GB and copied a tiddly .txt file to it OK, so all other aspects seems to be working.

I already have 4 other internal drives, so I had to install a SATA PCI card, to give me the 5th SATA connection. I don't dabble with hardware very often - so I'm always a bit cautious. About to load video files via firewire to the new drive, so this should be a good test.

harlequin
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Joined: Aug 16 2000

from my dealings with sata i have observed the following.

1. fast to save to
2. fast to read from

3. poor copying from ata133 to sata
4. poor copying from sata to ata133

5. firewire seems a lot better , so probably because they are both very high speed devices.

6. if a sata drive dies ..... it's dead ..................

Gary MacKenzie

sepulce@hotmail.com ( an account only used for forum messages )

Thinkserver TS140 , 750ti Graphics card  & LG 27" uws led backlight , Edius 8

Humax Foxsat HD Pvr / Humax Fox T2 dvbt

Dave R Smith
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Joined: May 10 2005
harlequin wrote:
6. if a sata drive dies ..... it's dead ..................

Gulp.

I have a firwire external HDD, but needed more space.
Also connecting camcorder via firewire (without disconnecting External HDD) made the external HDD invisible in explorer.

From reading this forum, caddy system seemed favourite, and my IT advisor suggested an internal caddy housing and assured me speed would be same as any other internal drive.

He also assured me risk of failure is no different to any other hard drive.
can you expand on '6. if a sata drive dies ..... it's dead .................'.
Do you mean the connection - or the data on the HDD is not revoverable by removing it.

Isn't it all just data on a hard drive, with different formating, so risk is same regardless of connection type
... he says like a lamb to the slaughter..

harlequin
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Joined: Aug 16 2000

i had a 160gb sata hard drive stop working ....... completely .... 2 months old ( max ) no warning.
it may just have been a bad one , but i have heard of others saying the same.

having said that , 1kb missing from a 13GB file on any drive makes the file useless , so maybe not worse than having the thought you can recover files only to find you can't recover complete files.

Gary MacKenzie

sepulce@hotmail.com ( an account only used for forum messages )

Thinkserver TS140 , 750ti Graphics card  & LG 27" uws led backlight , Edius 8

Humax Foxsat HD Pvr / Humax Fox T2 dvbt

Dave R Smith
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Joined: May 10 2005

Thanks for your swift and informed replies Gary.
I bought 2 of the Icy boxes (one just for it's inner caddy), so I will put your experience to my IT Guy and see if there are better alternatives.
He is a corporate consultant for a big local company, 'Watford electronics', so gets plenty of exposure to these issues.
I could return one caddy+drive.