On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
On 2013-06-14, Jim Wilkins wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" wrote in message
...
...
Unfortunately, they were from an IBM RAID setup, and had been
formatted with 520 byte sectors, instead of the standard 512 byte
ones.
[ ... ]
It would really be nice to have them usable, to replace the 36GB
and 73GB drives in various software RAID arrays.
Enjoy,
DoN.
When I called drive support asking how to reset the P-list, to
reclaim
spare sectors on the huge G-list, they said it could only be done
on
their custom hardware, because of the embedded servo tracks I
couldn't
access.
[ ... ]
O.K. THe P-list must be what the Hitachi manual for the drives
describes as "skip"s. Each sector has information to move to the
next
*good* sector, skipping over the intermediate bad ones.
The "G-list" is probably what Sun reserves two cylinders at the
end of the drive for -- a pool of spare sectors to use as needed to
replace sectors which go bad over time.
However the reformat that's part of installing Windows made a
Reallocated Sector Count of several hundred thousand disappear, and
the bad section no longer slows down in the HD Tune read speed
benchmark tests.
[ ... ]
I guess that if I got a PCI card which was a host adaptor for
the FC-AL drives, (Fibre Channel -- Arbitrated List) and the proper
drivers, I could use a Windows box -- after converting a spare drive
bay
(two slots) out of a damaged Sun Blade 1000 to hold the drives). I
may
have to do that. Which flavor of Windows was this?
[ ... ]
Your problem is way above my pay grade. I fell (or was pushed) into
some SCSI once but wiggled out as qiuckly as I could.
And this is FC-AL. It accepts the SCSI commands (so does IDE,
for the most part), but the hardware part of the interface is quite
different.
It has only two wires of input, and two of output, both
differential. It looks for its address on the data flowing through, and
if it is not for it, it lets it flow through to the next drive, for up
to 126 drives total in the chain. And it is faster than the fastest
SCSI.
Original SCSI was a 50-pin connector, with an 8-bit wide
bidirectional data path, and a few handshaking signals, plus a matching
ground for each data wire.
Wide SCSI is a 68-pin connector, and 16 data bits, but otherwise
pretty much the same. Except that it may also be HVD (High Voltge
Differential) or LVD (Low Voltage Differential). The latter can have
the plain (single-ended) drives connected and it will work, but it slows
down a bit. :-)
Then there is the SCA (Single Connector Access) which has an
80-pin wide connector, which gets the wide SCSI data though some of
those pins, the +5V and +12V power, and four wires to specify which SCSI
ID the drive will answer to. (It is determined by which socket it is
plugged into when there are multiple drives in a housing.) It is a
hot-swappable interface, unlike the others. The power pins make last or
break first when plugging in or unplugging.
The FC-AL is like the SCA, except that it is only a 40-pin
connector, and has seven wires to specify the SCSI address. Also
hot-swappable.
IIRC it was Windows 2000. The MS CheckDisk utility with the /r switch
may be as good.
O.K. I actually have a Windows 2000 system, and the install
media for it. All I need is the right card to allow it to talk to the
drives. :-) It's not like I'm using that system for anything else. :-)
When I was using Sun workstations the IT department wouldn't let me
play around inside them, the fear in their eyes revealed that they
knew too well what I could do.
jsw the usurperuser
Hmm ... At work, I was part of the SysAdmin team, and at home I
own all the Sun machines (purchased at hamfest and eBay prices --
certainly not new. :-)
I had already been playing with Sun workstations and servers at
home when they started that SysAdmin team. I'm retired now, so it is
all my machines (well ... except for the one which my wife uses. :-)
Thanks,
DoN.
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