HP 5200 EX OPTICAL DRIVE

[Mary Robson]

The drive works for all read, write and browse operations.

But when I eject one optical disc the drive will not accept another. It fails to 'suck in' the media and forcing it does not make the media avialable.

The only solution seems to be a re-boot

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Mary,
please confirm - host reboot or drive power cycle? I know that 5200ex should be external one so can be power cycled separately to the host.
Please use HP LTT to check drive http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storageworks/ltt/index.html . Try updating firmware. If you wish you can generate support ticket for drive and attach to your next reply zipped
Eugeny

[Mary Robson]

When the unit was powered off without a pc re-boot the system hung when trying to access the drive.

I have now updated the firmware from 1.14 to 1.16 and this has improved matters. I can now power off the unit and turn it on again and it will accept a second disc.

However it still will not load again after ejecting without the power off. I have still had an occassion when it would not recognise the drive and it appears to be getting sluggish.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Then:
- disconnect 5200ex from any SCSI cables and try inserting disk, then removing it, then inserting again, removing again... i.e. checking if SCSI bus has any influence on this drive behavior;
- check terminator at the end of SCSI bus (if there's only one this 5200ex on the bus then there should be SE terminator in its spare SCSI connector);
- check if cable is SE narrow one (50pin-50pin high density) and is not broken;
- try another SE SCSI adapter like Adaptec AHA-2940UW
Eugeny