Adding new components always causes a thrill

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

I received several e-mail messages last week after my article appeared, in which I told you about my lost data. The sympathy that they were expressing showed me that, in general, people already know how painful it can be to suddenly have a dead hard disk and have no backup for the data that was stored on it.

Hopefully, too, people realize that backing up their data does not cost much these days and there are several alternatives to burning the CDs in case they really hate seeing those beautifully labeled plastic platters ending up in the garbage can.

Now, with my work PC out of commission, I had to use my daughter's ASUS Prodigy as a temporary replacement. Running on a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 processor, it was actually the fastest PC at home. As you could imagine, my daughter had loaded her PC with all kinds of programs and games so that it was no longer running as fast as a 2.0 GHz system should be. So, I reformatted her 30 GB hard disk and installed my Windows XP on it.

Then, what was I to do to prevent the same painful disaster from happening to me again? First, I decided to use two SCSI hard disks for storing my live data. The two hard disks would have to be mirrored, so if one should fail the other would still have the data.

Somehow I still had unbroken faith in IBM hard disks. So I called Ark Media, asked them what they had available and what the prices were. They told me that IBM no longer made the 30 or 40 GB IDE hard disks. They told me that the company had actually decided to focus on selling IBM SCSI hard disks, so I would have to place an order for an 80 GB IDE hard disk if I still wanted to get one.

The smallest IBM SCSI hard disk that they had in stock at that time was the 18 GB, which cost US$120 each. One step up would be the 36 GB, but the price would be $240. I believed I would not require more than 10 GB to store my work, as I usually work with Word documents.

Ark Media does not sell SCSI cards, though. When I went to Jl. Kentang to pick the hard disks up, I should actually have gone to their next-door neighbor, Jayacom, which I was later told was the distributor of Adaptec SCSI cards. I had thought it would be easy to find an Adaptec SCSI card in Ratu Plaza. Adaptec is the leader in SCSI controller cards.

I was wrong. None of the stores in Ratu Plaza had a good SCSI card, let alone the relatively expensive Adaptec SCSI cards. Incidentally, if you have been to Ratu Plaza lately, you will have noticed that many of the larger computer stores have moved out. It is perhaps no longer the place to find the latest and the greatest computer components and peripherals.

Fortunately, I was able to track down Compuland, one of the stores that used to be located in Ratu Plaza that specializes in servers as well as networking gear. They had moved to the 5th floor of the newly opened STC shopping center next to Senayan Plaza. I went there and asked Pak Rono, the owner, for an Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller. With a transfer rate of 160 MB per second, it would be adequate for my new UltraSCSI hard disks. He suggested I spend around $40 more and buy the $270 Adaptec 29320- R instead for "investment protection". I agreed, as a SCSI card usually lasts a lifetime.

I also asked for a really good power supply to replace the one I had on my PC. He did not have these products in stock, but he promised his employee would bring them to my house the next day.

The Adaptec 29320-R is a hostRAID controller that is actually intended for use in a server or a workstation. It can combine two or more SCSI hard disks into one virtual storage device and mirror the data. All the data written on one hard disk will be automatically written on the other hard disks. This setup is used in an environment where data safety is really paramount.

It was then Pak Rono told me there was no real need for me to have a RAID. "Your backup solution is too expensive," he said.

A cheaper alternative would have been to buy two IDE hard disks, one internal and one external. For the external hard disk, all I would have to buy was a USB 2.0 -- or FireWire-based hard disk enclosure. On the market we have a choice of the smaller external enclosures for the 2.5-inch hard disks like the one we have inside our notebook computer, or the larger enclosures for the desktop PC's 3.5 inch hard disk. The 3.5 inch hard disks are cheaper but they come in far larger capacities and they normally last longer.

"If you have an external hard disk enclosure, you can backup your internal hard disk every day and then store the device in a safe place. You will also get a portable backup device that you can use to backup your other computers," Pak Rono told me. If the BIOS of your motherboard already supports bootable USB media, you can even boot your computer from this external hard disk.

* Only for live data

Like most of you out there, I keep installing and uninstalling programs on my computer. So, instead of installing Windows and the software programs all on my mirrored hard disks, I decided to invest in an IDE hard disk. I would only use the UltraSCSI hard disks to store my live data, so that in case something happened to my system I would only have to reformat the IDE hard disk, reinstall Windows XP on it and leave the SCSI hard disks alone.

So, the next day I went to see Anton, another friend of mine, who has a store in the basement of Gajah Mada Plaza. Besides buying the hard disk, I went there as I wanted to check how the stores in Gajah Mada Plaza were doing. Like in Ratu Plaza, it seemed many computer stores had also moved out from this location. It was too bad. Luckily, Anton was still there and his business seemed to be doing well.

I bought a 80 GB Maxtor from Anton, which cost me Rp 850,000. Like Pak Rono, Anton also suggested I buy the external hard disk enclosure to backup my data instead of using two mirrored SCSI hard disks. There was more than one model available on the market, and I finally bought one that he happened to have at his store, which added Rp 750,000 to my spending that day.

Back home, I began cleaning my crippled work PC. I carefully wiped out all the black smudge and dust. When the Adaptec SCSI card and the power supply I had ordered from Pak Rono came, I installed them in the PC. The power supply was rated 400 watt, and it was specifically made for servers. It should have enough output to support two SCSI and one EDI hard disks as well as a slew of other add-on cards.

By the way, my work PC had a Pentium III processor, which I overclocked to run at 800 MHz. I had no problem with the speed, even when it also served as the Internet gateway to my home network.

Setting up the SCSI card and installing Windows went smoothly. However, when Windows restarted, the PC somehow refused to reboot. It seemed the system did not recognize the boot hard disk. For two days I tinkered with the BIOS settings, changed the boot sequence and tried all kinds of the tricks I knew, all to no avail.

I noticed both the SCSI card and built-in USB host shared IRQ 9. Both were not configurable, so there was no way I could change either one. I was once told that moving the add-on cards around in the banks of PCI slots can sometimes change the IRQ setting, but it still did not work when I tried it.

When I reached the peak of hopelessness, I took the PC to Pak Rono's store and asked him to have a look at it. Who knows there was one setting that I missed. And, lo and behold! When Pak Indra, his assistant, turned on the PC for the first time, it just booted from the IDE with flying colors. The Windows that I had installed on the IDE hard disk even instantly recognized the RAID subsystem as Drive D:. Pak Rono's assistant's showed me how to initialize this drive using Windows XP's Administrative Tools, which I had never used before. I brought the PC home, feeling confident it would work flawlessly from then on.

Again, it turned out that I had been too confident. Once at home, the same problem occurred. The PC did not boot. Totally frustrated, I sent an SMS to Pak Rono, asking him what might be the cause. "Try using a PS/2 mouse," he replied. And, yes, it worked! It turned out that, because the USB and the SCSI controller used the same IRQ, the two devices conflicted as during their initialization. Once the machine had booted, both would work smoothly, however.

In hindsight, it made sense. When I first installed Windows XP on the new IDE hard disk, the USB mouse was not plugged in. It was when Windows installer asked for a mouse that I plugged in my Logitech USB mouse. When the machine was tested at Pak Rono's store, Pak Indra used a PS/2 mouse instead of a USB one. That is what is really exciting about assembling our own PCs or installing new components. Small things can always give us a real headache, but when the problem is solved we always say, "Why didn't I think of that?"

And, what about the external hard disk enclosure that I bought from Anton? I will tell you what I have found out next week.