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Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

 
Joseph Tillman
Advisor

nas 1200s firmware upgrade

We have a NAS 1000s that was previously upgraded to NAS 1200s with the 349040-B21 upgrade kit.

We tried migrating the drive to 750gb drives, but the SIL 0680 IDE controller will not post will the drives. It reads drive information for drive 0 and then hangs.

With no drives in 0 or 1 (or the old 160gb drives in 0 and 1) the system boots and the AMI Bios sees the 750gb drives in 2 and 3 as 750gb.

Is there any way to update the Silicone Image 0680a chipset with a new firmware?
37 REPLIES 37
Joseph Tillman
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

Anyone have any idea?
Ulrick65
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

I have been wondering about the max size I can upgrade mine to as well. There is a pretty good post on there from a guy that upgraded to 4 500gb discs.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupport/questionanswer.do?threadId=1013360&admit=109447626+1198511209526+28353475

If you have the time, you might try replacing one disc at a time and rebuilding on the fly....then expand the F drive to fill up the remaining capacity if you get that far. Seems like this is what he did with the 500GB. Also, it seems to me if 500GB works, then 750GB should...but maybe not.

Post back if you ever find a solution and I will do the same.
Joseph Tillman
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

The OS is fine with the drives, but the SIL0680a IDE controller will not boot with the 750gb drives present.

If I install using the original 160gb drives in bay 0 and 1 and 750gb drives in 2 and 3, then replace the drives in 0 and 1 one at a time, I can get the system up and running as long as I don't have the 750gb drives in when the SIL bios enumerates the drives.

Windows sees the drives once it boots fine though. I do loose the primary OS though.
Ulrick65
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

That seems odd... I would think it the drives are recognized once the system is booted, then the controller is able to recognize them...hence it should post.

I assume you tried the LBA settings, etc. But I wouldn't that would matter anyway...

Eric
Joseph Tillman
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

It is definitely weird. There are firmware updates from Silicon Image, but they will not install since the chip is not a add-on card.
John Jore
Occasional Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

Hi all!

I've just bought myself a 1200s from ebay and can confirm I have the same problem. Bay 2 and 3 work fine with 750GB drives, but the SIL will not boot with a 750GB drive attached. I too have found a number of firmware upgrades for the SIL, but nothing to upgrade the mainboard with.

In my case, Windows would not see the 750gb disk when I replaced bay 1 with the 750GB drive and when rebooting, hangs.

As bay 2/3 does not have a BIOS attached to it, i cant disable the BIOS on sil and boot from those bays either and hope windows "sees" the drives without the bios being enabled.

Would anyone know how to calculate the various limits of controllers, if 750GB does not work and 500GB does, what would the magic max size be?

Anyone with any suggestions?


Regards,
John Jore
Joseph Tillman
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

We have been running the system with the 750gb drives for awhile now.

Other than reboots it is fine. It does have to resync the array after reboot though.

It is a pain and not ideal, but it works.
John Jore
Occasional Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

Thanks for the update!

As my kit will be in a datacenter few miles away and your procedure would be a major pain to actually implement if there was a powerfailure, I'll go with 2x500GB disks and 2x750.

Vol F: RAID 5: 500*4 = 1500GB
Vol G: RAID 1: 250*2 = 250GB
Total: 1750GB


JJ
Ulrick65
Advisor

Re: nas 1200s firmware upgrade

Joe:
I am curious about how you have it setup. Can you go through it for me? I thought you mentioned that it would not boot with the 750s in, but then you say it rebuilds after reboot. Can you give me low down on you have it setup. I rarely have to reboot, so this might work out for me.

John:
I would be curious to know how you have that setup as well. I assume your boot partition is still mirrored with a primary and secondary (recovery)? Once all installed with the 500gb, then you go back and add the 250GB RAID 1 on the last two drives?

Thanks

Eric