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old Adaptec I2O RAID vs. a new Cheetah U320 15k = narrow/async
Dear everyone,
I'm having fun with some old hardware, I'm stress-testing an old Adaptec RAID controller with a large number of disk drives etc. While I'm at it, I've discovered an interesting incompatibility. Related hardwa Adaptec 3210 (I2O RAID, IOP303 + AIC7899 U160) Seagate ST373455LC (73 GB, U320, 15k RPM) The DPT/I2O BIOS always reports the disk negotiated as narrow/async/ 3MBps. The disk is mounted in a hot-swap drawer in a 6bay SCA enclosure, together with five other disks (various Seagate and Fujitsu) - all the other disks are detected properly as U320. The culprit disk is misdetected in this way no matter what, regardless of which bay I put it into. At the same time, if I remove the Adaptec RAID an plug the cable into a plain U320 HBA, the culprit disk drive is detected properly as U320, no matter which bay I put it into, and runs just fine under Linux (~130 MBps sequential read/write) without a hint of SCSI-related problems. My idea is, that this is not likely an electric/impedance problem on the SCSI bus. Rather, it seems to be an incompatibility between the firmwares of the two devices. Neither Adaptec nor Seagate have an e-mail contact to their tech.support on their web, and their FAQ's are not much use. Adaptec does have a slightly fresher firmware (from sometime in 2001) on its web, but it's labeled as ASR-2110 (not 3210), and there's no "release note" about the bugs it fixes. I'm somewhat reluctant to flash that. I don't like this sort of "blind flashing" and this is not a pressing issue at the moment... I know the ASR-3210 is nowadays hopelessly out of date, hardly supported anymore. The obvious solution is to use a 2120 or a 2130 for the single bus that I have :-) But still, any ideas are welcome. Frank Rysanek |
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old Adaptec I2O RAID vs. a new Cheetah U320 15k = narrow/async
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#3
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old Adaptec I2O RAID vs. a new Cheetah U320 15k = narrow/async
Dear Mr. Rienstra,
thanks a lot for your response :-) On 10 Led, 16:49, "Folkert Rienstra" wrote: The DPT/I2O BIOS always reports the disk negotiated as narrow/async/ 3MBps. The disk is mounted in a hot-swap drawer in a 6bay SCA enclosure, together with five other disks (various Seagate and Fujitsu) - all the other disks are detected properly as U320. How exactly does an U160 controller detect an U320 disk as U320? .... sorry, detected as U160 obviously :-) Detected as U320 on an AIC7902 plain HBA. The culprit disk is misdetected in this way no matter what, regardless of which bay I put it into. Did you try different setup parameters in the setup utility. Is there a setting for Domain Validation (or whatever DPT called it). If so, disable it. I don't think those parameters can be changed. Maybe I should try the Tab key again. I'll try again. My idea is, that this is not likely an electric/impedance problem on the SCSI bus. You could check by removing all other drives. I did try that as well. Didn't help. Adaptec does have a slightly fresher firmware (from sometime in 2001) on its web, but it's labeled as ASR-2110 (not 3210), You can probably ignore that. It appears universal. I've actually flashed that, and it works :-) Internally it mentions 3110F 3410S 3210S and 2110S ADAPTEC 3000S ADAPTEC 2100S ADAPTEC 2400A ADAPTEC 3210S ADAPTEC 2005S It also anounces as: "Adaptec RAID Setup Utility V1.12/66I 9/4/2001" No model fixing. I don't like this sort of "blind flashing" If that's even possible: "The selected file %s is not a %s flash image for this type of adapter" hehe, didn't get as far as running "strings" on the image file :-) BTW, I seem to recall trying to flash a ZCR-2005 firmware into a ZCR-2015 card. It did work out after a change in the filename I believe. That was some five years ago... I know the ASR-3210 is nowadays hopelessly out of date, hardly supported anymore. What support would it need now that it didn't when it was younger? Fresh firmware updates to solve potential compatibility issues with today's drives? Just a guess, anyway :-) I really meant to say that hardly any vendor will help you with hardware that you've purchased 10 years ago (in terms of newly written software updates), and that's definitely reasonable. After some more testing, I have to say that in general it seems that the I2O firmware copes pretty well with today's drives. Frank Rysanek |
#4
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old Adaptec I2O RAID vs. a new Cheetah U320 15k = narrow/async
On 13 Led, 02:43, wrote:
Adaptec does have a slightly fresher firmware (from sometime in 2001) on its web, but it's labeled as ASR-2110 (not 3210), You can probably ignore that. It appears universal. I've actually flashed that, and it works :-) err... I meant to say that the firmware does run on the 3210 hardware. It does not solve the compatibility issue with the Cheetah drive. Frank Rysanek |
#5
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old Adaptec I2O RAID vs. a new Cheetah U320 15k = narrow/async
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