CAT5e Cable Test Instrument

[RasFada]

Hi All,

Can anyone point me to the right instrument to use to check for data loss at cable end and also possibly check for cable damage?

The company I work for is experiencing a high rate of hard drive crashes [1.1 per business day on average over a month]. I thought the problem could might stem from an unstable AC power supply, bad cabling, or just defective drives from the manufacturer.

I am trying to narrow down on variables with this problem so any help would be greatly appreciated. Also, I am curious to know has anyone had this same experience and how was it resolved.

Thanx much in advance!

Bryan Nunez
Telecom Tech/Contractor

 

[bikechuck]

are all the drives on the same system? bad cabling shouldn't crash drives unless it's on the power supply or grounding. Sounds like an interesting problem to resolve. Give a little more description of the problems/systems/location.

 

[skip555]

its a excuse hardwre guys like to use to use to charge the customer for defective equipment

 

[BitFuzzy]

[ bad cabling shouldn't crash drives unless it's on the power supply or grounding]

Actually it is rare, but I have seen a few bad IDE cables cause their share of problems. It usually causes an intermittent drive issue at first
(random seek errors/crahses etc)

Without knowing more about the environment it's really hard to say.

(if replacing the cable doesn't fix the problem)

Take the suspect bad drive out and place it into a second system as a secondary drive. If you don't have access to diagnostic software, you can download a disk manager from the drives MFG's support site (usually). While not the best, it'll work fine for testing for drive errors. (You'll need to do this usually to get a RMA anyway)

If it tests bad (failed) you've found your problem
If it passes you've got allot of testing to do