Replacing a bad external SCSI drive help

[James Colby]

Hello everyone -

Last week I had an external seagate (ST173404LWV) SCSI drive fail on my L-4000. I ordered the replacement drive, shutdown my system, connected the drive, and brought the system back up. I was not able to access the drive so I tried an ioscan -fnC disk and an insf -e. The insf created the device files, but now whenever I try to run a command against that would use the drive (pvcreate, diskinfo) the command hangs. Any ideas on what my problem might be? Thanks for your help!

-James

IOSCAN output:
ioscan -fnC disk
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
=====================================================================
disk 5 0/0/1/0.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST173404LWV
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0
disk 0 0/0/1/1.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39103LC
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c1t0d0
disk 1 0/0/1/1.2.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39103LC
/dev/dsk/c1t2d0 /dev/rdsk/c1t2d0
disk 2 0/0/2/0.0.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39103LC
/dev/dsk/c2t0d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t0d0
disk 3 0/0/2/0.2.0 sdisk CLAIMED DEVICE SEAGATE ST39103LC
/dev/dsk/c2t2d0 /dev/rdsk/c2t2d0
disk 4 0/0/2/1.2.0 sdisk SCAN DEVICE HP DVD-ROM 304
/dev/dsk/c3t2d0 /dev/dsk/disk_query /dev/rdsk/c3t2d0

[A. Clay Stephenson]

My first question, since this appears to be the only device on this bus, is "How do you know that the original disk was bad?" The disk itself may have been fine but the real problem may be a bad controller, cable, or terminator. It is also possible that the replacement drive is defective. Do the behaviors of the old and new drives differ in any significant way?

[James Colby]

Thanks for the reply. The disk was most definitely bad. The drive was making all kinds of terrible noises. I guess that it is possible that the controller or cable is bad also. What would be the best way to verify that? Try to use a new cable? A known good drive?

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Okay, that helps. It's unlikely that you have two bad components and since the drive is recognized, it's probably okay. The first thing that I would check is that the SCSI ID is correct and unique. I assume that 0 was your intended SCSI ID. The next thing to check is that the bus is terminated in EXACTLY two places -- on the ends of the bus. One possible problem is that you have the terminators on the ends of the bus but you also have the jumpers enabled to terminate the new drive as well. Finally, at least one device one the bus must supply terminator power --- which is not the same as termination.

[James Colby]

Thanks again for your quick reply, but I have a few questions about it:

1) Is there an easy way to check if the SCSI bus is terminated in exactly two places. There aren't any lights on the drive that would indicate if it was terminated?

2) How can I check which device, if any, are supplying terminator power?

Thanks a million for your help!

[Eugeny Brychkov]

James,
please post 'diskinfo -v /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0' command output to your next reply
Eugeny

[James Colby]

Hi....When I try to execute diskinfo -v /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0, I get no output. The command just hangs.

Thanks for your help!