imminent H/D failure

[Ayman Altounji]

I get a 1720 - Hard Drive detects imminent failure when booting up. We have replaced the h/d 3 times ( it is always the same drive), the drive cage, and the system bd. The latest Smartstart has been run (4.9). The bios version is E24, and the Smart 2/P controller has bios 1.94. What else could I look at?

[Ayman Altounji]

We are having the same problem. Service has been contacted numerous times (to: replace the drives, the cage, and controller card), and now the unit is out of warranty. Until I saw this posting, we were about to replace the hard drive at our expense. Good we didn't do that. The server has now been pulled from production, and is depreciating as I writing this.

We are on BIOS date 12/01/99 ver E24. We are also using a Smart 2/P controller, but the firmware is at 4.44.

Our guess is the drives are OK, and there is a Compaq utility to reset/clear the Western Digital?s 9100 controller of the error.

It would be nice to hear Compaq?s position on this, because our clients, who also use Compaqs, may want to know as well. Do we assume the server to be at the limits of its life expectancy?

[Ayman Altounji]

The firmware on the array controller is way old - 4.44 is pretty recent, 1.94 is not. A lot of problems were traced to old firmware on the array controller. There are also firmware updates for certain hard drives. These bios updates for the drives themselves are part of the options rompaq.
Please take a look at http://www.compaq.com/support/techpubs/customer_advisories/EX990607_CW01_2.html - it's a customer advisory that discusses 1720 errors on smart2 family controllers.