Sorry for the late SUMMARY but, as we say in Portugal:
"Mais vale tarde que nunca!"
Q.
>* Is it possible to buy RZ compatible HD? Wich brands/models?
>* Is it possible to have a reliable set of carriers/disks that aren't
>bought from DEC? Wich brands/models?
>* Anyone have experience that want to share?
[ I just copied the important juice in the messages I received because I
think they are very important and the all got important stuff that maters.
Usually I wuold just paste a small resume. But they are very tich. ]
Replys:
(long but very informative)
"Acacio (Casey) Carvalho" <CASEY_at_YORKU.CA>
------------------------------------------
We have been using Seagate drives for most of the storage associated with our
2100s (bought some 5 years ago). We've used and continue to use the
following:
Seagate drive DEC (Compaq) equivalent
------------------- -----------------------
4GB ST15150N RZ29B
2GB ST12400N RZ28B
9GB ST410800N
4GB ST15230N
More recently we also bought some wide drives, namely Seagate's ST15150W
(4GB),
but the only problem is that Digital stopped selling the StorageWorks
cannisters
unless you buy the drive from them. Maybe there's a 3rd party vendor that has
manufectered cannisters for the wide drives, but as far as I know there are
none. Currently, the 4GB wide drives that we have (on raids) do not have a
LED
hooked up, meaning that you don't see any visible disk activity or failure.
We
have to rely on the raid software to detect any problems and send out
notifications. This is a bit of a problem.
We have not had any problems with any of the above drives. Periodicaly,
one of
them fails (natural, after a few years). If you go with non-DEC certified
drives, make sure that they are at the latest f/w revision level.
One thing that I have been told is that the narrow 4GB drives are very
difficult
to acquire nowdays, so you may be forced to buy wide drives. DEC/Compaq also
dropped their prices recently and have become more competitive.
=========================================
Christopher Knorr <cknorr_at_hops.com>
-----------------------------------
You can buy other drives (I've used Seagate, which I believe is what most
of the Digital drives are) a lot cheaper. The problem comes with the
StorageWorks cases that you have to put around them. You used to be able to
buy these but Digital discontinued selling them a couple years ago
supposedly because people were doing this and then claiming them under
warranty. Supposedly the Digital f/s people couldn't tell the difference,
but this doesn't make much sense to me because the cases we bought were
white and were clearly different than any other color I've seen.
We've looked high and low to find a vendor who will sell the cases with no
luck.
=====================================
Bryan Hodgson <bryanh_at_astea.com>
--------------------------------
We've put non-Digital disks in Alpha's with some success.
Digital re-writes the internal PROM SCSI ID info on disks to contain
"Digital-known" identifiers (e.g. RZ*whatever). So disks from others
work (eg. you can partition the disk, create filesystems, mount 'em,
etc), but Digital utilities that depend on recognizing the branding (e.g.
RZ*) won't work when they see things like "ST32340N" (which happens to be
one that works).
============================================
============================================
And that's it!
I will buy Seagate drives and forget about blinking lights :)
Thank you all, once again!!
Joao Rochate
-------------------------------------------------------
Joao Pedro Rochate | EMail: jrochate_at_ualg.pt
Servicos de Informatica | URL: w3.ualg.pt/~jrochate
Universidade do Algarve | Phone: +351 (0)89 800 961
8000 Gambelas - FARO | ISDN: +351 (0)89 860 125
P O R T U G A L (pt) | GSM: +351 (0)931 9506546
-=[
http://www.ualg.pt ]=- | Fax: +351 (0)89 860 129
-------------------------------------------------------
Eng. de Sistemas e Computacao - UCEH - Univ. do Algarve
Received on Wed Oct 14 1998 - 11:41:23 NZDT