If my master drive is failing will it affect the slave as well?

[Jethro57]

I've been having some problems lately and I assumed it may be related to my HD since it's been making a lot of creaking noises for a while. Its been freezing a lot and when I click on folders they won't open and the text underneath starts flashing. Yikes. I've never come across that one before so I started booting up off the slave drive. Well just now the same thing happened with the text flashing running off the slave. Could this somehow be related to the master drive failing or do I just have other bigger issues?

 

[Makosuke]

First, there are a number of things other than a failing drive that can cause symptoms like that, so don't automatically assume it's the drive.

Second, a failing drive controller could also cause problems like that, rather than the drive itself dying. Either way, hope you've got a backup of everything important.

And third, YES, it's possible for a drive that physically dies to take another on the same bus with it. I once had exactly this happen when one of the infamous DeathStar drives went "pop" rather abruptly, and corrupted the seagate that was slave on the same bus in the process.

Again, if you don't have a good OFFLINE backup, make one now!

 

[Jethro57]

Thanks Mak,
The reason I suspect the drive is because it's a used powermac I bought and it's been making the dreaded creaking, squeeking noise ever since I bought it, especially when it's processing something. The slave drive is from an old mac I owed that never gave me any problems, it's just small. I'm wondering if I should make the old drive the master again and just disconnect the other drive completely for a few weeks and see if it resolves anything. Would this be just a matter of disconnecting them and resetting the jumpers?

I guess what I was also wondering is does the slave drive run completely independently on it's own or does it somehow feed off the master, thus causing problems with both drives?

I did back up most everything last night....Thanks.

 

[Makosuke]

I'm wondering if I should make the old drive the master again and just disconnect the other drive completely for a few weeks and see if it resolves anything. Would this be just a matter of disconnecting them and resetting the jumpers?

That's what I'd do, and yes, you just need to change the jumpers and remove the other drive from the chain. If it's still happening, then maybe something else is wrong, either with your OS install or with the motherboard.

And essentially no, it's not independent--they're both using the same pins, effectively taking turns talking to the computer. It's entirely possible (likely, even) that one misbehaving device on the bus will mess with the other. And of course if one device has a more spectacular hardware failure (as in, chips blowing up, which does happen occasionally), then just about anything could happen to another device sharing those wires.

 

[Jethro57]

Thanks again for your reply,
I had a feeling the drive was bad when I bought it and was eventually planning on replacing it. It's just that it had Tiger installed and I don't have it on disc so I kept using it. Looks like I'll eventually have to shell out some cash, hopefully not on a new computer.

I might try cloning Tiger to the other drive but I'm still looking into how that works exactly or if it even will.