[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
[...] Harry wrote: Also I don't see any evidence this upgrade would make the card work with those 750 drives. Paul replied: You could perhaps try giving Adaptec a call or e-mail and see if anyone there can tell you what that controller supports, since their website doesn't really say. Yeah, but not all that likely. I did write to them when I was trying to research before buying that card and was told its been out of production for some time Doesn't mean I wouldn't get some old hand who'd just know though. Even worse, I'd have to install the card on a different machine since the one I needed it for has no floppy. And it appears I'd either need to install it on a windows machine or install a little free dos application that allows user to create a bootable floppy to get the job done. If you can manage to get a floppy disk image via dosbox or wine or something, or by making the disk on a machine that does have a floppy drive, it should be possible to burn it to a CD or bootable USB device. This page has some instructions on how to burn a floppy image to CD: Well that's good to know and maybe I'll try that. But the server has no cdrom either. I took floppy and cdrom off to allow for more hdd. So that leaves usb. Actually seems like it would be about as much work as just braving up and installing the card in my wifes' machine and doing the flash there ... just to find out if will then recognize sataII or not. That would be a really foolish move except that she is gone for several hours... otherwise the fight would be on... hehe. However, in the mean time I already went ahead and bought a Sil 3114 off ebay for $20 + $10 shipping. And I've learned from some people on an Australian `overclocker' forum that it will definitely work with large new sata II drives. Although it is a card from the sata I era. They say if it doesn't just work out of the box, it definitely will with a flash to newest bios. That's the part no one has said about Sil 3112a. So I'll wait for it to arrive and try flashing them both. One last random idea; several years ago on my old 266MHz Pentium II, That's an interesting story.. makes me want to think there would be some way to trick the machine in this case too. Of course the stumbling block is that the recognition happens during bootup. But maybe if I'm brave enough to connect the satas while the machine is running... it might have some chance of working. And PROBABLY (famous last words) the worst that might happen is the controller would get fried. (Hopefully not brand new 750 drives or even worse.. the motherboard). er... I think I chickened out already. Actually I've already connected and disconnected sata drives with the machine running... It came about trying to go back to using that 1205sa as I was before attempting to move up to 750s. I'd had 2 200gb sataI drives on it. I put just one back on still trying to learn more about how the 1205sa worked, but there was some error message I've forgotten now, but it said enough to make me think I'd put it on the wrong channel. So I pulled the data port and plugged it into the other one which was not on a power plug and then plugged in the power plug. Seemed to work, and apparently did no harm.. Probably a dumb move though. And I got lucky. Anyway... I don't think I'll do it with a brand new almost $90 wd750.
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Paul, you will be relieved to know that I braved up and installed the 1205sa card on a windows machine... updated driver which may have been a waste of time and flashed both Base BIOS and SATA_raid BIOS. Apparently this card has a BIOS that is in 2 parts or maybe each on it own chip. Their are 2 on the card. I didn't hold out much hope but it worked just fine with that done. No need for jumpers ... it just works. Some might think its a waste to go with the 1.5GB of `sata I' but the card is PCI anyway. I'm not sure how much of a bottleneck that is but I suspect that would get in the way before 1.5gb does. This server is on a home lan so not going to get an industrial workout anyway. I'm a happy camper even though I jumped the gun and ordered a Sil3114 off ebay, I'm pretty sure I'll use it sooner or later. You have been very patient and helpful ... I really do appreciate that. Thanks.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 7:07 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Paul, you will be relieved to know that I braved up and installed the 1205sa card on a windows machine... updated driver which may have been a waste of time and flashed both Base BIOS and SATA_raid BIOS. Apparently this card has a BIOS that is in 2 parts or maybe each on it own chip. Their are 2 on the card. I didn't hold out much hope but it worked just fine with that done. No need for jumpers ... it just works. Some might think its a waste to go with the 1.5GB of `sata I' but the card is PCI anyway. I'm not sure how much of a bottleneck that is but I suspect that would get in the way before 1.5gb does. This server is on a home lan so not going to get an industrial workout anyway. I'm a happy camper even though I jumped the gun and ordered a Sil3114 off ebay, I'm pretty sure I'll use it sooner or later. You have been very patient and helpful ... I really do appreciate that. Thanks. Great news! As far as 1.5 vs 3.0, the drive cannot physically get anywhere near that fast so it probably won't make any difference. I had a 320GB drive that came with the 1.5 mode jumpered from the factory, and didn't even realize it for about six months. Once I noticed and changed it, there was absolutely no speed difference. I just got the satisfaction of seeing 3.0 in dmesg instead of 1.5. :)
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Boot partition is not involved here. Its on a a different (IDE) disk. Its not on a partition actually but in the MBR of Master drive on first IDE controller. The newly added disk is sata and is on a PCI sata controller (Adeptec 1205sa). After re-reading your first post, my guess would be: your new drives are SATA II but your Adapter controller does not support that, according to http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support/sata/sata_host/ASH-1205SA/ Most drives have a jumper to put them into 1.5gbps mode (rather than 3gbps mode). See if your new drives have one of those jumpers. There are pins (no actual jumper was supplied) but the only thing mentioned on the drive about using pins is this: Jumpered pins 3 and 4 enables PUIS (Power Up In Standby) I think I found what you are referring to but there is no mention of changing 3gb to 1.5gb... at least not in those terms. Or maybe this is something else. They call it: Enable or disable the spread spectrum clocking feature. Default setting is disable Here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=487language=en Which has this further link on the Specification tab/Left hand column Quick Installation Guide http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2079-001042.pdf
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com writes: Most drives have a jumper to put them into 1.5gbps mode (rather than 3gbps mode). See if your new drives have one of those jumpers. There are pins (no actual jumper was supplied) but the only thing mentioned on the drive about using pins is this: Jumpered pins 3 and 4 enables PUIS (Power Up In Standby) I think I found what you are referring to but there is no mention of changing 3gb to 1.5gb... at least not in those terms. Or maybe this is something else. They call it: Enable or disable the spread spectrum clocking feature. Default setting is disable Here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=487language=en Which has this further link on the Specification tab/Left hand column Quick Installation Guide http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2079-001042.pdf I found a little more about this. Something suggesting to use pins 5-6. (Figure 4 in the pdf at below URL) http://www.google.com/search?hl=enrlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS273q=WD+Sata+II+jumpersbtnG=Search The top one on the list. (it has such a massive direct url I've given the search page containing the hit (at the top)) So installed jumper on 5-6 and booted up. I still get the same kind of hang at the point where the adaptec PCI card throws up a screen. Press F3 to enter configuration utility Primary channel: WDC WD200-blah 19082 MB = old 200gb drive Secondary channerl: WDC WD750-blah No size given on the new drive, like it cannot read the drive size. And no further progress seems possible. Pressing F3 has no effect.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 9:11 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com writes: Most drives have a jumper to put them into 1.5gbps mode (rather than 3gbps mode). See if your new drives have one of those jumpers. There are pins (no actual jumper was supplied) but the only thing mentioned on the drive about using pins is this: Jumpered pins 3 and 4 enables PUIS (Power Up In Standby) I think I found what you are referring to but there is no mention of changing 3gb to 1.5gb... at least not in those terms. Or maybe this is something else. They call it: Enable or disable the spread spectrum clocking feature. Default setting is disable Here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=487language=en Which has this further link on the Specification tab/Left hand column Quick Installation Guide http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2079-001042.pdf I found a little more about this. Something suggesting to use pins 5-6. (Figure 4 in the pdf at below URL) http://www.google.com/search?hl=enrlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS273q=WD+Sata+II+jumpersbtnG=Search The top one on the list. (it has such a massive direct url I've given the search page containing the hit (at the top)) So installed jumper on 5-6 and booted up. I still get the same kind of hang at the point where the adaptec PCI card throws up a screen. Press F3 to enter configuration utility Primary channel: WDC WD200-blah 19082 MB = old 200gb drive Secondary channerl: WDC WD750-blah No size given on the new drive, like it cannot read the drive size. And no further progress seems possible. Pressing F3 has no effect. I found the following page which would agree with pins 5-6 meaning what I was suggesting: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2534 I also found this page which mentions your Adaptec card does not work with 750GB Seagate drives -- so maybe that card is the source of your problems. http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/components/details/801.html Are you using the latest BIOS for the Adaptec card? It looks like the chipset is Silicon Image 3112A and the latest BIOS on SI's website is 4.2.84. http://www.siliconimage.com/support/
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: So installed jumper on 5-6 and booted up. I still get the same kind of hang at the point where the adaptec PCI card throws up a screen. Press F3 to enter configuration utility Primary channel: WDC WD200-blah 19082 MB = old 200gb drive Secondary channerl: WDC WD750-blah No size given on the new drive, like it cannot read the drive size. And no further progress seems possible. Pressing F3 has no effect. I found the following page which would agree with pins 5-6 meaning what I was suggesting: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2534 I also found this page which mentions your Adaptec card does not work with 750GB Seagate drives -- so maybe that card is the source of your problems. http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/components/details/801.html That is kind of a drag because I bought this card due to having found it on that very HCL... It was only 1 user who reported it and on specific hardware... I don't remember what now but do remember that it didn't match mine very well ... but I tried it anyway since its very difficult to find a sata controller for my hardware there. Are you using the latest BIOS for the Adaptec card? It looks like the chipset is Silicon Image 3112A and the latest BIOS on SI's website is 4.2.84. http://www.siliconimage.com/support/ You sure do excellent research! And fast. I don't know about the bios and don't really have a clue how to find out but maybe investigating the support page you cited will get me started down that route. But the Seagate thing sounds pretty bad... and likely to mean its a nogo.
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: Are you using the latest BIOS for the Adaptec card? It looks like the chipset is Silicon Image 3112A and the latest BIOS on SI's website is 4.2.84. http://www.siliconimage.com/support/ After downloading the bios upgrade and trying to figure out how to use it from the instructions... One thing is not clear to me, does the procedure write something to the chip on the card or to the system (pc) bios. Also I don't see any evidence this upgrade would make the card work with those 750 drives. Even worse, I'd have to install the card on a different machine since the one I needed it for has no floppy. And it appears I'd either need to install it on a windows machine or install a little free dos application that allows user to create a bootable floppy to get the job done. I'm starting to wonder if this is really worth the effort when I may find it still doesn't work for newer 750s. I think I'd almost have to hear from someone who has used it with newer drives to keep on with it. It cost $42 which I hate to just throw away, but there is some chance the Digiconepts that I bought it from will give me some kind of exchange for something known to work in the situation I need it in. You've helped me an awful lot. I wish I new your tricks for turning up information... it always seems to take me forever to find what I need on the internet.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: Are you using the latest BIOS for the Adaptec card? It looks like the chipset is Silicon Image 3112A and the latest BIOS on SI's website is 4.2.84. http://www.siliconimage.com/support/ After downloading the bios upgrade and trying to figure out how to use it from the instructions... One thing is not clear to me, does the procedure write something to the chip on the card or to the system (pc) bios. I think it should be the BIOS on the Adaptec card. Also I don't see any evidence this upgrade would make the card work with those 750 drives. You could perhaps try giving Adaptec a call or e-mail and see if anyone there can tell you what that controller supports, since their website doesn't really say. Even worse, I'd have to install the card on a different machine since the one I needed it for has no floppy. And it appears I'd either need to install it on a windows machine or install a little free dos application that allows user to create a bootable floppy to get the job done. If you can manage to get a floppy disk image via dosbox or wine or something, or by making the disk on a machine that does have a floppy drive, it should be possible to burn it to a CD or bootable USB device. This page has some instructions on how to burn a floppy image to CD: http://linux-issues.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-make-bootable-msdos-cd-from.html But, I think you're probably right... it seems more and more likely that the controller just doesn't work with drives of that size. :( One last random idea; several years ago on my old 266MHz Pentium II, it only supported drives up to about 16GB or so... I got an 80GB drive and the machine wouldn't get through POST with it attached, it would just freeze when it got to that point, apparently because the motherboard/BIOS didn't support drives that large. I managed to get around this problem by unplugging the drive, then booting into the BIOS and /disabling/ that drive (rather than having it set to Auto detect or manually defining the drive geometry). That caused it to skip it entirely during the boot process, which allowed the operating system (OS/2 Warp) to load off of my boot drive (which was within the BIOS limits), at which point the OS detected the drive and it worked just fine. I don't know how (or if) you could do that with your add-in controller but I thought I'd throw it out there just in case it may apply. Good luck, Paul
[gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
Anthony Metcalf ne...@anferny.me.uk writes: Harry Putnam wrote: [...] Sounds like the bios is seeing the drives in a different order now to before, and so is trying to boot from the wrong disk Can you manually alter the order it tries disks? I can, and it is set directly to boot from master on first IDE controller. I haven't changed or messed with that in the course of this swap. So seems unlikely the bios has confused between IDE controller where the boot disk is, and PCI sata controller where the swap is taking place. It looked to me like the message would becoming from that PCI sata controller. Press F3 to enter configuration utility Primary channel: WDC WD750-blah-bah = my new 750gb drive That doesn't look like something coming from the normal bios does it? The disk referred to is the new added one, of 2 on a PCI sata controller. And I've seen this message without a disk reference, every time I boot. Press F3 to enter configuration utility I've just ignored it and booting was fine. But now there is a disk reference and bootup stops there. Paul Hartman paul.hartman+gen...@gmail.com writes: On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Setup: amd Athlon64 +3400 architecture I'm attempting to replace 2 200gb sata drives with 2 750 gb drives. Make sure your boot partition is not too far from the beginning of the disk. Boot partition is not involved here. Its on a a different (IDE) disk. Its not on a partition actually but in the MBR of Master drive on first IDE controller. The newly added disk is sata and is on a PCI sata controller (Adeptec 1205sa).
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Yikes, replacing sata 200gb with Sata 750gb .. no bootsky.
On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Harry Putnam rea...@newsguy.com wrote: Boot partition is not involved here. Its on a a different (IDE) disk. Its not on a partition actually but in the MBR of Master drive on first IDE controller. The newly added disk is sata and is on a PCI sata controller (Adeptec 1205sa). After re-reading your first post, my guess would be: your new drives are SATA II but your Adapter controller does not support that, according to http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/support/sata/sata_host/ASH-1205SA/ Most drives have a jumper to put them into 1.5gbps mode (rather than 3gbps mode). See if your new drives have one of those jumpers.
