Snap 2200 With 4 Drives

[pettefar]

Just out of curiosity I replaced the single drive IDE cables on my 2200 with normal dual-drive cables and connected two extra drives set as slaves. I now have a four-drive Snap server. I made a big striped disk which worked fine. The PSU seemed to cope with the extra load.

One wonders if this would let people with single-drive Snap servers make drive backups and maybe mirrors?

Could the 4400 OS be installed on such a 4-drive 2200 system?

Nick

[blue68f100]

They all use the same SnapOS. No nothing about the Guardian OS. These Guardian machines did not start showing up till a couple of months ago. I think it checks the hardware closer than the snap, before installing.

As for motherboards what you found is not new. The 2200 MB is the same as a 4000 setup. On some models you have to set a bios flag, this is where the problems accour. The 1x00 will reboot in the middle, once you set the unit to 2 drive. Here it gets locked in a error loop that can not be cleared. Then you have what is know as a doorstop. So far know one has been able to clear this error loop. And many have tried. I have one here right now that a user brought me. I have tried everythink and nothing works.

[pettefar]

I was merely speculating about the single-drive machines. I have just read on this forum that using a slave drive with a 1-series machine allows you to create a second drive so I guess this is really old news. I did notice, during my brief test time with four drives on my 2200, that the icons are just for 2-drives and I wasn't shown options for making a four-drive mirror ie 2 x 2 drives (mirrored concats) or RAID 50. Would I have to set this BIOS flag to get these options? How do I set this BIOS flag? If you can set the BIOS flag, why can't you unset it?

I was just using the drives I had to hand, 2 x 80GB that came with the SS and 2 x 120GB spare drives. When I made a "big disk" it re-partitioned and formatted the 120GB disks as 80GB disks. I guess this is logical. I'm trying to find a way of partitioning/formatting these drives back to 120GB and making sure they have the OS on so I can use them as a 120GB mirror. Any tips on this?

How are your Seagate 300GBs? I'm going to be buying some drives for this machine next week. Do you recommend them and if so, what model are they?

Cheers!

Nick
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1 Snap2200 2x80GB+2x120GB v4.083UK

[blue68f100]

Where everyone gets in trouble is when you change the bios flag it triggers a auto reboot. Then if it doesn't see the proper hardware it gets locked in to the death loop.

The snap OS only supports RAID 0, 1, 5. the 4x00 only has raid 5.

My 300 gig Seagates (7200.9) have been trouble free since I installed them.

IF YOU WANT TO TRY IT, YOUR ON YOUR OWN.

NOT RESPONSIABLE FOR THE RESULTS.

First you need to disable auto reboot.

I have not down this but the cmd shold be like "bios flag -auto"

To make and change in the bios section perminate you have to "bios unlock" make chages then "bios lock"

You will be change "bios model" I believe the 2 drive is "0" where 4 drive is "2"???
just issue bios model and it will give you the options.

The 4000 drives config were different between versions. 002 were M/S (40 cond) and 003 were CS (80 cond).

[pettefar]

Right, I have done exactly this except that I did not read this first. My system was already accidentally set to not auto-reboot so I suppose I have been saved by God!

I am now a possessor of a Snap 4400:-
Model Software Hardware Server # BIOS
4000 series 3.4.805 (US) 2.0.4 814023 3.4.758

I am in the process of creating mirrors. I would do RAID 5 except that I don't have enough same-size drives...

Gosh, isn't this exciting!

Ta muchly for the Seagate drive info. Will purchase ASAP. Maybe I should buy FOUR now!? I might think about making a bigger case too.

Nick
---------------------
1 SnapServer 4something 2x80GB + 2x120GB

[blue68f100]

You could try out the new 750gig drives by seagate x4 = 3 tb........

[pettefar]

Have just created two mirrors, 80GB and 120GB....

[pettefar]

Gosh no! Money too limited for the next few months. Did see those. Reckon Maxtor et al will bring out even larger drives ie 800 or 900 and the kudos will go to Mr TB of course! Whoever is first to be Mr TB will be crowned the Disk God and their name will be sung in all the high places.

[pettefar]

05/08/2006 19:06:19 Command: bios model

Model Byte currently is:
0 - 2 drive IDE: "Minnie"
1 - 1 drive IDE: "Mortie"
==> 2 - 4 drive IDE: "Laser"
3 - 12 drive IDE: "Clipper"

------------

Disk Status as of 8/5/2006 7:25:25 PM.

Click on a disk icon to view the disk log.

Disk Status Total<MB> Free<MB> Files
Mirror - Data protection disk
Rebuilding backup disk. 0% complete 74,799 74,724 13
Mirror_2 - Data protection disk
Rebuilding backup disk. 0% complete 112,306 112,194 13

[pettefar]

Better get another fan I suppose...