LVD (ST39175LC) drivers on a HVD (A4800A) controller

[Bert Woods]

I'm confused... I have been reading about the many variations of SCSI and I thought I understood them.

I have four A4800A (HVD?) PCI Ultra SCSI cards on a N4000 server. All the drives attached to these cards are (ST39175LC) Seagate's Spec show the LC model as multimode (SE/LVD) device. The A4800A service guide states the card supports only HVD SCSI devices. Which is right? Considering everything I've read states HVD and LVD are incompatible and mixing can cause equipment failure!
Obviously they work as the drives were shipped from HP and have been working for the past four years.
Bonus question: I want to add some drives because one has failed. Each controller is connected to 1/2 of a Jamaica box (HASS), and has 3 drives attached and I can add one more to each controller. What HD can be used with the A4800A (hp or vendor specific p/n would be appreciated!)

Thanks...

[Joshua Scott · Accepted solution]

first, what kind of enclosure/system are the ST39175LC drives in? sometimes the drives have and adapter on the back. I've used those seagate 'LC' type drives in a k-class which only has HVD internal drives with no problem because of the adapter on the back.

secondly, the Product numbers of the differential drives for the HASS/Jamaica box are as follows:
Low Profile Drives:
2GB - A3647A
4GB - A3346A/A3347A
9GB - A5238A
18GB - A5286A

[Michael Roeder]

Hi,
8/16/x.y is SE (50 pin HD).
In the 5 8/4.z hot swap slots, there are two kinds of disk.
1st: 2 GB and some 4 GB HVD drives, like
SEAGATE ST32171W or SEAGATE ST34371W
2nd: some 4 GB and 9 GB drives, like
SEAGATE ST34572WC, SEAGATE ST34573WC, SEAGATE ST39175LC. These drives are UW/U2W drives, the bay contains an adapter on the connection from HDD to Bay. You can recognize it on three chips there.
You could use (HP unsupported) 9/18/32 GB U2W drives (maybe 72 GB, but be aware if the drives will go too hot - they will die).
I have checked max. 32 GB U160 Seagate, but the drive would be too hot after some minutes because the air flow is very bad in the D330 Server (or Jamaica, too).
Open the bays and have a look at the SCSI drives and the adaptor.
18 GB U2W/Ultra160 with 7200 rpm should live long enough.
Of course you can use SE/UW/U2W/U160/U320 (LVD/SE) drives in the bay kind 2 if it makes any sense for you.
Have fun.

[Michael Roeder]

The info was for D-Class, but same hot swap devices are in the Jamaica HAS. Do an ioscan -fnC disk to see the HDD models ...

[Bert Woods]

Joshua, the drives are in a HASS (p/n: A3312A) I found the p/n for the drive (A5285A) though HP has two other p/n for the same drive. I believe the HASS unit or the hot swap bays have a HVD to LVD converter. I was not aware that HP used them or saw any regard to them in the HP's guides. Very interestingly I can get the drive for under $100 but add the HP case and the price seems to be over $1000. Is the extra $900 for the converter or for HP's logo?

Michael, thanks for the options (especially the air flow issues) our computer room is (now) AC controlled but I think I'll stick with the 18 gig drives and avoid any thermal issues. Then again I'm looking for Faster disk system. I'm also considering a RAID controller for the 9000 as I need performance (I hope to get from striping) but also need data redundancy (mirroring) My current system only offers one or the other. Though I have looked at PE striping & ux/mirror with slow performance as a result. Sadly, I'm being pushed into an Intel based solution due to cost and configuration restraints

I had some problems posting, as a result I wound up posting the same question under the disks form.
Thank you for your replies and my question has been answered

[Joshua Scott]

Bert,
You could put another drive in the Black casing, but it wouldn't be supported, obviously. The reason the 18GB Jamaica Drives are so expensive is that they were almost all bought up last year since they're the largest size available for the HASS/D3xx.

[Bert Woods]

so cost is a basic issue of supply and demand. Ok, that I can accept. And yes, I assumed I could swap the drive in the hot swap case. I would want to do some stress testing before putting production data on it.
Again, thanks for the replies!!!