Narrow/Wide Negotiation

[Jim_177]

We have a 9000 series library with HVD drives and the appropriate Compaq controllers. The system is negotiating Narrow (looking with Insight manager) even though the drives will do Wide. Why can't they negotiate wide? This would improve the throughputs.
Haas anyone any thoughts???

[Eugeny Brychkov]

Jin,
can you be more precise? Which library? Which host with which host bus adapter? Which cable and terminator(s) do you use (HVD)?
Eugeny

[Jim_177]

Device Type Library Media Changer
Model COMPAQ ESL9326D

The Tape drives in the Libray are:
Model Compaq 35/70-GB DLT Drive
FW Revision 2561
Model Compaq 35/70-GB DLT Drive

The controller is a HVD Compaq
Storage works dual channel ultra-wide differential library Host Bus adapter
157299-B21

The cables are proper Compaq Cables not sure of the length but are within spec for this system. Termination is what came with the library. I am sure they are the correct sort.

Host is Proliant ML370 single processor with lots of memory
Have looked at a few of our systems and find that the 64MHz Adaptec derived cards and the ML integrated controllers like to work at Fast wide, but the older Controllers like to work at fast narrow.
157299-B21 is not 64MHz but I would expect it to run Wide. There seems no way to force Narrow or Wide. It seems to be auto negotiation. It would be interesting to find out if other sites see wide or narrow. We only have one BIG library.

Hope this is detailed enough

Jim

[Vincent Fleming]

Have you checked if your drivers are up-to-date?

If not, go and check, then see if that does it for you.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

A little addon to Vince's: check SCSI bios is up to date also
Eugeny

[Marino Meloni_1]

The driver supplyed with W2k in some case do not allow the negotiation between devices and HBA, the result was a 5 M/s speed, a narrow mode and async communiction mode.

New drivers solve the problem.

If the problem is only the Narrow/wide setting, the cause may be a damaged cable /terminator /interface or abent pin on the scsi cable
marino

[Curtis Ballard]

This is a common problem with Adaptec drivers. Especially with the latest (6.1.530.201). Various version 6.0.4xxx drivers seem to work better and most of the 5.xxxx drivers seem ok.

If you are using the Compaq drivers you shouldn't have any problems with 6.1.550.100 in most cases.

The Microsoft drivers provided with Windows 2000 generally work correctly as well.