ian hoare

Salut/Hi Jeff Richards,

OK, I've had a more systematic look and I think the results are odd.

le/on Sun, 27 Jul 2003 12:48:20 +1000, tu disais/you said:-


What I did was to change the position into which the drives were slotted, I
have a plug in system designed for a hot swappable raid array - dunno why!
So one is in ID 3 and the other ID 6 (they're next to each other, but
somehow those are the IDs that the controller card gave them. After an
initial hiatus because I'd not told the controller which was the bootable
drive, I rebooted and after a brief (<1 min) delay both came up OK, though
that might well be because I'd been fiddling.

So I fired down and this afternoon I turned on again. The mewer (Fujitsu 9
gig) drive was recognised immediately which is what I'd expected as I heard
it turning from switch on. The smaller older (cheetah 4 gig) drive didn't
start up, it is very noisy with a characteristic sound like noisy brushes,
so I can tell easily. Equally obviously therefore, the controller didn't
recognise its existance, though I suspect it was "looking" for something,
because it hung for a few seconds after displaying the first drive. Anyway
the OS being on the modern drive everythng booted up fine, and I went out
to the garden to inspect my tomatoes. 5 mins later when I came back, the
other drive was up and running, and after rebooting, was recognised by the
controller immediately.

So I shut down and restarted (using "shut down - restart button, not
removing power) and both drives were recognised immediately.

So I then shut down (shut down button) and left the machine without power
for 1 minute precisely. On re-applying power the machine booted up
perfectly.

Any ideas for further tests?

See above.


--
All the Best
Ian Hoare

Sometimes oi just sits and thinks
Sometimes oi just sits.

ian hoare

Salut/Hi Jeff Richards,

le/on Thu, 31 Jul 2003 09:01:12 +1000, tu disais/you said:-


No, I didn't explain myself well. When I was getting the _long_ delays, I
had my drives in 1 & 2. I had the "bright" idea of changing the drive
positions to see what would happen and that seems to have eliminated the
delay on the Fujitsi drive and reduced it dramatically on the Cheetah.

Thanks for the explanation, though I suspect that what was actually
happening was that neither drive was rotating. Certainly that's what
happens with the older - cheetah drive. What I wondered was whether the
controller was supposed to send a signal to the drive saying "Hey, wake up,
it's time to turn" or whether this (the HD spinning) was supposed to be
automatic, the moment any power is supplied to the drive.


--
All the Best
Ian Hoare

Sometimes oi just sits and thinks
Sometimes oi just sits.