Autoraid 12H with 36GB Problem

[Adey]

I have an Autoraid 12H (A3700A).

I have managed to get hold of a couple of 36GB 10K drives (A5292A).

When I installed them in the Autoraid it comes up in the LCD display verifying disks and then after a couple of minutes fails them.

Disk Failure at slot XX

The drives in the caddy are Seagate models and are LVD. So I then installed the bare drives into hot swap caddies for an L Class server.

The disks work fine in the L Class, I can see them from ioscan as claimed I can verify the size with diskinfo, I can even create a volume group and mount a file system on them.

Has anybody any ideas why the Autoraid wouldn't see them.

Thanks

Adey

[Bernhard Mueller]

Adey,

I would guess the 12H controllers are quity picky regarding disk firmware.

Had a similar issue where disk drives from an L Class would not work in an SC10 encloure of an FC60. The FC60 controllers just refused to accept the disks.

Regards,
Bernhard

[Christopher Rupnik]

Hi
Autoraids cannot take LVD drives. You need to use SE or Single Ended (Yellow tag) drives for a 12H.

Even the differential (purple tag) will not work correctly.

Sorry! 18GB is the largest drive that can go into the 12H.

Chris

[A. Clay Stephenson]

36GB drives work fine in 12H's; in fact I still have a over 30 of them; however, the modules must be SE-SCSI because eventhough a 12H has two FWD/HVD SCSI external buses, it has four SE SCSI internal buses. Each disk module has a translator board to convert SE-SCSI to whatever the internal disk itself requires -- typically LVD. You need to find some AutoRAID disk modules. I suspect that anything you can find on the used market for a 12H (as opposed to a 12) will work; even 4GB modules. You should then be able to use your LVD 36 GB drives in them. There was also a firmware upgrade required to use the larger disks but you should really have your controller firmware at HP62 (the latest) anyway.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

36GB drives work fine in 12H's; in fact I still have a over 30 of them; however, the modules must be SE-SCSI because eventhough a 12H has two FWD/HVD SCSI external buses, it has four SE SCSI internal buses. Each disk module has a translator board to convert SE-SCSI to whatever the internal disk itself requires -- typically LVD. You need to find some AutoRAID disk modules. I suspect that anything you can find on the used market for a 12H (as opposed to a 12) will work; even 4GB modules. You should then be able to use your LVD 36 GB drives in them. There was also a firmware upgrade required to use the larger disks but you should really have your controller firmware at HP62 (the latest) anyway.

[Adey]

Thanks for all the comments.

The A5292A drives that I have are the correct 36GB drives for the Autoraid 12H. They should work but don't the drives are O.K. though.

The drive inside is has an HP P/N of A6110A and is a Seagate ST336704LC.

If you check all the info out on HP's Web site this is the correct drive that should be in a A5292A.

I'm thinking it has something to do with firmware because I now have taken some 9.1GB drives from an L Class and placed them into the Autoraid Disk Caddies and some of them work and some of them fail in the Autoraid Straight away, and the only difference is firmware revisions.

Adey