new drives not recognized

[hon71]

I am having constant problems adding new drives.

 

I have 2 drives that when I add them they are recognized but when i try to start them they do not come on line and the system freezes. So I bought new hard drives and put them in and they won't even show up. I currently have 6 drives working and it takes 3800 minutes for a parity check. I do not understand why the system does not recognize my new drives. Can I reset the server some how and start over? Don't really know what else to do.

[Joe L.]

The symptoms you are describing are usually associated with poor quality cabling (do NOT use round IDE cables, they cause more grief than they are worth) or a power supply that cannot keep up with the current demands of the disk drives.

 

I've also read that dome drive trays are not up to the task and will cause the drives to resort to PIO mode and slow down to a crawl. (causing very Looooooonnnnnnggggg parity re-calc times)

 

Joe L.

[hon71]

I have the MD-1200/IDE

 

Disk status  Model/Serial No. Temperature Size Free Reads Writes Errors

parity Maxtor 6H500R0/H80VQP1H 41°C 488,386,552 - - - -

disk1 Maxtor 6H500R0/H80LEHZH 39°C 488,386,552 - - - -

disk2 ST3400633A/5NF2NCQN 40°C 390,711,352 - - - -

disk3 WDC WD200BB-00AUA1/WD-WMA6Y3495146 * 19,551,136 - - - -

disk4 MAXTOR 6L080J4/664204954096 * 78,177,760 - - - -

disk5 ST3400633A/5NF2NBEP 37°C 390,711,352 - - - -

disk6 Not installed

disk7 Not installed

disk8 Not installed

disk9 Not installed

disk10 Not installed

disk11 ST3400633A/5NF2LMHQ * 390,711,352 - - - -

Command area

Stopped. Initial configuration   Start will record all disk information, bring the array on-line, and start Parity-Sync on parity if present. The array is immediately available, but is unprotected until Parity-Sync completes.

  Restore will initialize the stored array configuration; all drives will appear as New, but data disk contents are not affected.

I'm sure I want to do this

   Reboot will activate a system reset.

   Power down will activate a clean power down.

 

This is what my screen says, when I hit restore and start it will freeze up, also when I try to add brand new hard drives it does not recognize them at all.

[limetech]

Definately some funny things about your config, e.g., some drives report a temperature, some report '*' which indicates an error reading the temp (or the drive is spun down - but in this case probably not spun down, hence error).

 

A couple things to try.  First, please ensure the Promise IDE controllers are well-seated in the motherboard.  There have been cases of them becoming slightly unseated during shipment.

 

Next, you might try adding drives slowly, eg, add say parity + 2 or 3 data disks - then Start array and observe if Parity sync is going "fast" (anthing above 13MB/sec is fast).  No need to let it finish.  Just let it run say 5 minutes, refresh screen, and if "fast", then cancel, stop array, power off, add another disk, powe up, 'Restore' array config, then Start.  Repeat until you find disk and/or slot which causes serious drop off in speed.  At this point post results and we can proceed further depending on problem.

[hon71]

Everything looked good, however I have 5 slots occupied on the top portion of the unit, one being the parity and the other 4 working fine, however when I add a new unit to the existing free slot on the top or in any of the bottom free six slots it freezes. What happens is, I add a new drive and it sees it when it boots up, then it says invalid config, so I hit restore and it freezes up. I think I have tried everything I can think of and no success.

[limetech]

Please post the contents of the 'disk.cfg' file in the 'config' directory on the flash.  Or email as an attachment to [email protected].

[hon71]

# Disk configuration

spindownDelay=1

parity=/dev/hda

disk1=/dev/hdb

disk2=/dev/hdc

disk3=/dev/hdd

disk4=/dev/hdi

disk5=/dev/hdj

disk6=/dev/hdk

disk7=/dev/hdl

disk8=/dev/hde

disk9=/dev/hdf

disk10=/dev/hdg

disk11=/dev/hdh

 

[limetech]

hon71, please send email to [email protected] to troubleshoot this problem.  thanks!