SUMMARY: Dumps failing on a Maxtor 1.7GB disk

From: Ran-Chi Huang (rc@netarch.com)
Date: Fri Apr 24 1992 - 01:49:43 CDT


I recently posted :

>> We recently added a Maxtor 1.7GB SCSI disk to a SPARCstation 2 running
>> SunOS 4.1.1 Rev B and created 2 filesystems on it.
>>
>> The disk is a Maxtor Panther P1 SCSI drive and the format command reports:
>>
>> sd2: <Maxtor P1-17S cyl 1816 alt 2 hd 19 sec 83>
>>
>> We have also patched the kernel with the following patch:
>>
>> Patch-ID# 100343-04
>> Keywords: 1GB greater, disk, gigabyte
>> Synopsis: SunOS 4.1.1: sd.o patch to access scsi drive capacity
>> beyond 1GB.
>> Date: 11/05/91
>>
>> SunOS release: 4.1.1
>>
>> Topic: 1.3GB Disk Drive Enhancement
>>
>> Everything looks good except when we try to do a full dump with an
>> Exabyte EXB-8200 8mm tape drive.

I contacted both Sun's and Maxtor's tech support but was unable to resolve
the problem. Sun said that they could not help too much since this was
a drive not supported by them. Maxtor on the other hand was extremely
helpful but could not figure out why the problem exists.

Just a few days ago, I spoke to the salesperson who sold us the drive and
he mentioned that the problem as described was very common with the Maxtor
P1 drive.

The fix is to turn the read-ahead cache off on the drive and having
done that, dumps now run fine on my machine ! The only thing I had
to do was to send the drive back for a day for the store to reprogram
the drive.

Hope this helps some netters who may have experienced similar problems
with this drive.

Regards

-rc

-- 
--
Ran-Chi Huang                                               rc@netarch.com
Network Architecture Consulting., Fremont, CA                   netarch!rc



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