hard drive craziness

[ericb]

hi all, i have a problem that started when i added another hard drive to my box. here are some specs first:

PIII 733 /w 128megs of RAM
Slackware 8.0
kernel : Linux version 2.4.13

hda : WD 20gig drive
hdb : -
hdc : IDE cd burner ( sr0 )
hdd : 40 gig WD hard drive

basically the problem is that since i added the 40 gig drive and put my mp3s on it if i play music and use a web browser (mozilla, netscape4, opera, konqueror... probably any other one as well) the computer freezes completely. not just a software type of freeze where there is some hope of recovering from a different consolor or something, but an absolute freeze where nothing can help, but the reset button.

originally i had the hard drive on hdb, but tried moving it to hdd when it started doing this, but to no avail.

any ideas as to what the problem is or how i might go about fixing it?

thanks,
-ericb

[korn]

Check your resources and make sure nothing is conflicting (IRQ's etc.) Also if your using XMMS to play mp3s try going into the preferences/ and then options tab.

Make sure it says Read info on demand rather than on load. Because if you load up a few thousand mp3s it will read them all into memory and your other programs won't have any to use.

[korn]

I would also like to add that it is generally not a good Idea to slave Hard drives off of cd-roms.

just my opinion

[civ1492]

try to disable dma in your bios

[Compunuts]

it is generally not a good Idea to slave Hard drives off of cd-roms.

Yeap. Always HDD first as Master.

[ericb]

yeah, i didn't think that the hard drive as a slave to the burner was a good idea, which is why i did not put it that way in the first place, but when i shuffled it was easier to just do it that way... so i'm a bad person, what can i say...

anyway, i'll try putting it back as slave to the first drive and i'll disable DMA in the bios. i'll let you know if it helps, in the mean time any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[ericb]

ok, i'm back.

i switched my 40 gig drive back to being 'hdb'

the BIOS won't let me switch the DMA mode, but both are using UDMA mode 4. as is the CD burner which i was able to change.

my rc.local file has these entries:

hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hda
hdparm -c1 -d1 /dev/hdb
hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc

so that all drives are using DMA and performing 32-bit reads.

anyway, like i said before i'll let you know if the freezing continues

thanks for the ideas so far, keep 'em coming ;D
-ericb

[ericb]

yup. froze again.

removed hard drive related entries from rc.local (startup file in slackware)

[ericb]

didn't help. may start crying soon. :'(

[korn]

what chipset are you using....it may not mix will with that Hard drive or your configuration. Also did you install any software around that time? Maybe this is not a hardware issue

???

Just throwing ideas out