Problem with LC2000 Hotswap Drives

[Kurt Matthies]

I'm running an LC2000 with one 9Gb hotswap drive.

Last week, added a 36.4 UltraIII hotswap drive without incident. Installed, rescanned, formatted it worked.

This week, added another 36.4 UltraIII. When I plugged it in, the system lost contact with the first 36.4.

Now both LEDs are lit green when either or both of the 36.4s are installed. Neither are identified.

I thought I may have destroyed the hotswap hardware, but the 9Gb still works.

Any help here?

[harry d brown jr]

I'm not familiar with the LC2000 hotswap drives, but one of the first things to look for is the SCSI ID's, make sure they are all different.

live free or die
harry

[Kurt Matthies]

Thanks Harry, but the Hotswap mechanism handles the ID assignment.

As I said, neither work, even when I slide in one at a time.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I'm not familar too :o(
Any bent pins in connectors? Check all and try different slots
Eugeny

[Kurt Matthies]

No, but thanks for replying.

Electrically, they are fine.

I've been online with HP support for a couple of hours now.

We've reset the bus, reloaded firmware and still have the same trouble.

I think the disks were hosed, but why? This we can't answer.

Maybe power? They tell me that using multiple 36G drives should use a 2nd power supply. A power surge?

[Eugeny Brychkov]

I guess you can check drives connecting them to another SCSI controller with the same interface type (Adaptec 29160lp) to see if they're still alive
Eugeny

[Kurt Matthies]

Thanks.

I'm afraid to blow up another SCSI controller. They're hosed and going back to the place I bought them.

Thanks for your help.

[Mark Medici]

Kurt:

I ran into similar problems with LP2000R's. It turned out that a pin from the SCA connector to the SCSI backplane was bent under during the manufacturing process. Sometimes the pin made contact with the correct trace, other times it made no contact, and still other times it shorted other traces.

It took me a full day of trial-and-error, testing one drive in each slot, then the next, then a pair of drives, and so-on, before I realized their was an intermittent connection problem. When I finally pulled apart the backplane and looked with a flashlight, the problem was just visible.

If you get new drives and run into the same problem, this might be worth considering.

[Kurt Matthies]

Thanks for the info Mark. I'll check this out.

It is quite coincidental, as the first drive that was installed and running failed when I plugged the second drive in.

From what you describe, I can imagine this happening.

[Marino Meloni_1]

hi,
first,in which slot did you insert your drive?
the hotswapp cage of lc2000 is divided in two part, uper and botom, and is interconnected with a cable, this cable is needed, id you detach it in order to use duplexing, you need a kit that provide power to the lower part of the cage. so to identify if this could be the cause try to insert the drives in the upper part.
2- you didn't tell us what is the controller you are using, symbios or netraid?
3- if you insert the original disk on the slot where the 36,4 gb did not work, what is happening?
4- the leds on the disk are two, the first indicate power present and is always on, the second indicate the activity of the disk, and at the boot time, usualy you will see this second led flashing for one time, indicating that the controller have scanned it and it gave back the enquiry string that will appear on the monitor inthe boot sequence, did the controller hang at this moment? and is it at this moment that both leds are steady on on both new disks?

could you try some of these steps?
only old disk in upper slot (ID9)
only new disk in upper slot (id9)
did they appear in the bios controller?

[Theo Hill_1]

Are these HP drives?