XServe RAID upgrade to 750GB drives

[John Christie]

Mathew

My understanding is that 133 ATA drives are backwards compatible with 100 ATA drives. If your drives are configured as 2 separate volumes you can pull all the drives on one side and do a test using just one new drive. Power down the raid and remove all 7 drives from one side and label them so you know what order they were in. If both sides are raided together as one drive, you will need to remove all 14 drives to try this test. If Xserve Raid utility let’s you format and use the one drive, it will should remain happy when you add all 14. You may also need to run a firmware upgrade to enable the controllers to see larger drives, do this before you experiment with new drives.

WARNING, I am not an expert at this, and what I am recommending SHOULD work. Make sure you have no vital data on your Xserve raid before you start mucking around with it.

Cheers

John Christie

[Eric Hansen]

if you are running an Xsan, i would suggest replacing the 2 drives that the SAN uses for metadata. then you can get your answer on whether or not this works, and you wont lose any of your data. but this is only if you’re running an Xsan.

e

4 G5s, OSx 10.4.10, Final Cut 6.0.1, Kona LH
Xsan: Xserve 2.0 G5, 3GB RAM, 2 7TB Xserve RAIDs, Sanbox 5200
Quantum SDLT600A
decks: Sony HDW-M2000/10 HDCAM, HVR-M10U HDV with HD-Connect, DSR-1500 DVCAM, UVW-1800 BetacamSP
MacBook Pro: 2.33, 2GB RAM, OSx 10.4.10, Final Cut 6.0.1
cameras: Sony FX1 and A1U, Arri S/B 16mm
skis: Volkl Gotama 183s with 914s and Lange Fluid 120 boots

[John Christie]

Eric

I don’t think you can replace the drives that are storing the metadata. I wouldn’t do any testing involving the metadata drives, too scary!!

Cheers

John Christie

[Matthew Welch]

Mine is a stand alone Xraid… 1st generation. 180 gb IDE drives.

I can not find any of the more robust “NS” IDE drives from Seagate, the best I have found is the 7200.10 series, 750gb. Any other thoughts on drives? I was sticking to these as they are the equivalent of the Apple drives, just not “blessed and flashed”.

I figure I will pull all the 180’s in one bank, carefully remove and store (after I back up the volume), then put in the 750’s and format… put it into use and see what happens???

I have seen other threads where people have done this and they state everything is running fine.

I plan to insure myself by formating 6 drives and leaving the 7th as a hot spare, so if I get a failure early on it will re-build… also plan to have a second spare on standby (not hot).

I am running Raid Admin 1.5.1, so in theory, I should not have trouble recognizing the drives.

Any other ideas / cautions / thoughts?

[Eric Hansen]

sounds like you have your bases covered and i’m eagerly waiting to hear your results.

good luck.

e

4 G5s, OSx 10.4.11, Final Cut 6.0.2, Kona LH (v5.1)
Xsan: Xserve 2.0 G5, 3GB RAM, 2 7TB Xserve RAIDs, Sanbox 5200
Quantum SDLT600A
decks: Sony HDW-M2000/10 HDCAM, HVR-M10U HDV with HD-Connect, DSR-1500 DVCAM, UVW-1800 BetacamSP
MacBook Pro: 2.33, 2GB RAM, OSx 10.4.11, Final Cut 6.0.2
cameras: Sony FX1 and A1U, Arri S/B 16mm
skis: Volkl Gotama 183s with 914s and Lange Fluid 120 boots

[Matthew Welch]

Mine is a stand alone Xraid… 1st generation. 180 gb IDE drives.

I can not find any of the more robust “NS” IDE drives from Seagate, the best I have found is the 7200.10 series, 750gb. Any other thoughts on drives? I was sticking to these as they are the equivalent of the Apple drives, just not “blessed and flashed”.

I figure I will pull all the 180’s in one bank, carefully remove and store (after I back up the volume), then put in the 750’s and format… put it into use and see what happens???

I have seen other threads where people have done this and they state everything is running fine.

I plan to insure myself by formating 6 drives and leaving the 7th as a hot spare, so if I get a failure early on it will re-build… also plan to have a second spare on standby (not hot).

I am running Raid Admin 1.5.1, so in theory, I should not have trouble recognizing the drives.

Any other ideas / cautions / thoughts?

[Matthew Welch]

Are you guys running your Xraid under 10.5? I have upgraded and have not been able to get the drives to mount, the machine crashes on mount. Works fine in 10.4. Thoughts??

[Clemens Schweder]

Hi Guys,

can tell me anyone how to get it work with this Seagate Drives.
I found nothing else.

I’m using a Xserve RAID from 2003 with at the moment 14 Hitachi Deskstar 180 GB Drives which come directly from Apple.

Now we ordered a few ST750640A p-ATA Drives with Firmware 3.AAE.

Over RAID-Admin i can create an Array of the discs but can’t see them in Disc-Utility.
In System-Profiler the Xserve RAID is known.

I use a G4 Xserve but it didn’t worked in an G5 Xserve too.

Any ideas??

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[Eric Hansen]

i am not 100% on this because it’s been awhile since i’ve setup an array, but i believe that Disk Utility can’t see the individual drives, only the LUNs once they are created in RAID Admin. so go ahead and create the array and see if everything works.

i can’t comment on the firmware version, or if all the hard drive monitoring tools will work, because i havent tried this swap out yet. but you should be able to create the LUNs just fine.

since Apple discontinued the Xserve RAID, i’m sure i’ll be in this hard drive swapping boat with you soon.

btw, also make sure that you are running the latest RAID firmware and Xsan 1.4.2 if you’re creating LUNs over 2TB in size.

e

4 G5s, OSx 10.4.11, Final Cut 6.0.2, Kona LH (v5.1)
Xsan: Xserve 2.0 G5, 3GB RAM, 2 7TB Xserve RAIDs, Sanbox 5200
Quantum SDLT600A
decks: Sony HDW-M2000/10 HDCAM, HVR-M10U HDV with HD-Connect, DSR-1500 DVCAM, UVW-1800 BetacamSP
MacBook Pro: 2.33, 2GB RAM, OSx 10.4.11, Final Cut 6.0.2
cameras: Panasonic HVX200, Sony FX1 and A1U, Arri S/B 16mm
skis: Volkl Gotama 183s with 914s and Lange Fluid 120 boots

[Clemens Schweder]

Dear Eric,

you pointed me to something.The LUNs.

That is the problem. I resolved it.

So Apple removed the LUN Masking in the 1.5.1 RAID-ADMIN.
In the 1.5 RAID-Admin they are still present.

The trick is to go with the the RAID-Admin 1.5 into LUN Masking under extented and disable the LUN-Masking.

Than Restart the RAID and the Host-System and viola
i can see the RAID in Disc-Utility. And i can format them and it works.

Thanks Guys

So the bought Seagate 750 GB ST750640A are working on (they do not come frome Apple) a Xserve RAID 2003 as a RAID 5 with the amount of 3,4 TB of Space on a Xserve G4 !! I configured 6 Drives with RAID 5 it takes about 70 Hours to create the array.

It’s described in the Apple Discussions

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