Difference between J9F42A and 785103-B21

[CedGiussano]

Dear Sirs,

I'm considering buying an Hp storage, Msa 1040 iScsi (E7W02A)

anyone on this forum does know the difference between these 2 disk drives, both of them compatible with the E7W02A

- The J9F42A is marketed as a "SAS hard drive" ---> HP MSA 600GB 12G SAS 15K SFF(2.5in)  Enterprise 3yr Warranty Hard Drive

- The  785103-B21 is marketed as "Server Hard Drive" ---> HP 600GB 12G SAS 15K rpm SFF (2.5-inch) Enterprise 3yr Warranty Hard Drive

the latter (785103-B21) costs twice the former, but the specs seems to be identical.

There's something I'm missing?

Thanks

Matteo

CedGiussano

[Torsten.]

Lookup "MSA1040 quickspec" for supported drives.

[BK_HPE]

Hello @CedGiussano

First of all I want to welcome you.  I was researching the HP 600GB 12G SAS 15K rpm SFF (2.5-inch) Enterprise 3yr Warranty Hard Drive (785103-B21) and the HP MSA 600GB 12G SAS 15K SFF(2.5in) Dual Port Enterprise 3yr Warranty Hard Drive (J9F42A).  They are the same drive and have the same pricing on the HP Small and Medium Business Store web site.  The numbers you have provided, are identifying numbers that can be used on the HP web site or the HP Parts Store web site.   I hope this clears it up to you.  Please let me know if there is anything else I may be able to help you with.

[Aussie_Steve]

Gidday Ced.

There are 2 key differences between the part numbers you described. Importantly though, as you have said you wish to use it in a MSA1040 array, it's vital you take the J9F42A version. To understand why, a quick background on how HP sets up it's drives.

Most computer companies do not manufacture their own hard disks but instead rebadge drives made by other comapanies such as Seagate, Toshiba, etc. The exception used to be IBM that had it's own hard disk division but that has since been sold off to Hitachi. Some computer vendors source a hard disk such as a Seagate Savvio 15k 600Gb and make it available for any of their current computer devices that support that format e.g. SAS and that size and format e.g. 2.5" SFF. However HP seem to like to do things differently. They will source a bare bones drive of a retail model drive such as a Seagate Savvio then tweak it and sell variants of it so that the same basic drive may be sold with multiple different firmwares or interfaces etc.

The 2 drives you mentioned may appear to be the same but to the device you insert them in they are not. The J9F42A is intended to be used in MSA devices and as such if you insert the other drive, the SAN will know from the drive BIOS that it is not a drive intended for MSA devices and it will not work properly if at all. This is very important when you go to do firmware updates as I have a MSA2040 with 24 x J9F42A's in it and a HP support staff recently gave me a link for version HPD2 firmware that I tried to load in and it failed with an error. When I sent that error to another HP support person, he freaked and said that link I had been sent from his colleague was for the server variant of the drive, not the MSA version and not to try to use it. Both drives have "EH0600JDYTL" as the model BUT one is meant for servers the other for MSA storage devices, and the firmware is different. To get firmware for MSA drives, always look for the SAN firmware using the SAN model itself, then in the firmware list, it will include any MSA type drives. If try to look for the hard disks on their own in the drivers section, you will end up in trouble. In your case, if you go with the E7W02A, use that model number to search to on.

So, go with the J9F42A's. As a bonus, they are dual ported as in they have 2 sets of SAS ports on the back so SAN's like the MSA2040 that come with dual controllers can use both ports, one for each controller, whereas the other drive only has single ports accesible to the controller. The E7W02A you are looking is also dual ocntroller so as far as I know it would make use of both ports on the J9F42A's as well. Oh and whereas some computer hardware vendors equipment will work if you go and fit the original disk sourced from the maker such as Seagate, I have found that does not work in HP gear presumably a habit they picked up from the buyout of Compaq years ago which is where I first discovered if I replaced a Quantum hard drive supplied by Compaq with the exact same model direct from Quantum, the hotswap system failed, and later was told by a Compaq rep that Compaq reprogrammed the drives with their tweaked version of firmware so the RAID controller knew the drive was not sourced via Compaq (at the time for 3 times the price of the original) and so the hotplug was disabled.

I haven't used the MSA1040, but in my MSA2040, those J9F42A's fly!