Proliant 1600 Array configuration problems

[Drew Burchett]

I have a Proliant 1600 with an external drive array. I am currently having two problems with the array.

1. I began getting low on disk space, so I purchased two new drives to go with the three that area already in the array. However, only one of them shows up in the array. When I boot the machine, the other drive's lights respond just like all the drives that are working, but then all the lights go out and the drive does not show up in the array configuration.

2. I cannot extend the existing array with the new drive. I have downloaded the Compaq Array Configuration utility, but when I attempt to extend the array, I get the error message "You cannot extend or migrate logical drives on this controller because the controller does not contain a battery backed cache."

I have also attempted to control the array from the BIOS, but when I create the four disks as downloaded from the HP website, the BIOS will not recognize any of them as the array configuration disk. What's more, if I boot off the disks, I end up with a Japenese version of the BIOS setup utility. Not terribly helpful.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'd hate to have to go back to my boss and tell him he threw several hundred dollars away to get useless drives for this machine.

[Vwdl]

Drew,
The Controller will take charge of the drives and will only show whatever you tell it to show ; BIOS in this case is only useful for setting boot-order of the controller. The array controller hides the physical aspects of the disks and show one or more logical drives.
The array controller will also allocate the scisi-id, provided drives are hot-swappable and set in a hot-swappable enclosure ; if this is not the case you will have to do this manually and then you need to watch out for double id's.
The older controllers, 2-series in general do not support extension.
Regards
danny