Snap 4500 HD upgrade not showing total capacity in usable space

[JBPuterguy]

Hi Guys,
I wish to begin with, I'm glad I found your forum. You really know your sheet and its refreshing to see a collection of people with the knowledge to solve problems that wouldn't cost a fortune as it does with our fine friends at Adaptec.

Now that the fluffing is done, on to my question. I've been looking around in your forum to see if I could find someone else that had this problem, but I haven't run accross it yet. The company I work for has a Snap 4500 that has been working beautifully for about 5 years. I came on about 9 months ago and inheirited the maintenance of the network including the server. I've been whining to the boss that running with less than 20Gb is too close to disaster and we need to do some thing. I convinced him to buy a new Snap 410 to move everything over to and use the 4500 as a backup. After the info was migrated over and I take my customary two weeks resting time to see if anything blows up, I started to do some work on the 4500. Another issue with the 4500 was that it would lock-up and the only way we could get back in was to do a cold boot of the system. After the reboot, the drives would have to resync. This happened 4 or 5 times in about 2 weeks. After that, we didn't have any more lock-ups for another month or two. I assumed that it would run into some bad sectors on one of the drives. This was a definate motivating factor for us to covince the boss to part with the cash since our information IS our company.

The old setup on the 4500 had 4X160 Gb WD drives in it. As I've been looking around your forum, I found that I made a wise choise in drives. I went back with 4X320Gb WD3200SB RAID drives. I went through the whole procedure replacing the drives in the RAID 5 setup, swapping 1 out at a time and letting it restripe. I was able to completly rebuild the RAID with the new drives but it didn't show full capacity of the drives. It showed the drives registered as 312Gb with a useable capacity of 230Gb. I thought that it may be an issue with the OS. I was running Guardian OS v3.0.099. As I read on your forum, that may have been some of my problem. I upgraded to v4.4.049 and it still didn't see the full capacity. I decided that since all of my info is now on the 410 that I could wipe the 4500 and try to redo the RAID. As I am typing this, it is resyncing but it still shows the useable size of each of the drives is 230Gb, so no change. Also my hardware version is 05.01.00. Is there anything that you can suggest or am I doing something wrong?

On a subnote, I don't really have a tremendous amount of experiance with the Snap servers because the time I've spent here I have done almost nothing to it. These things really do run good.

[Phoenix32]

230GB usable is what a 250GB drive has. Interesting. You sure those are 320's not 250's?

I gotta think on this one a bit... David?

Oh, and since you are going that far already and have the OS GSU file, do a FULL CLEAN INSTALL of the OS (procedures can be found on the Adaptec site in the knowledgebase). Now I am not talking abut just installing it again, I am talking about a 100% fresh full install (done through a recovery screen).

[JBPuterguy]

The fresh install is a definate possibility right now. When I first started, I was going to save all the info, but its all gone now so a frest install will be a good thing.

A thought on the capacity, I know that Adaptec shipped these units with the 320s but is there a limit somewhere that I have to eliminate? I am very sure that they are 320Gb drives but they do seem to register the usable space as if they where 250s. It is showing them as 320s under the drives screen.

[Phoenix32]

Originally Posted by JBPuterguy

A thought on the capacity, I know that Adaptec shipped these units with the 320s but is there a limit somewhere that I have to eliminate? I am very sure that they are 320Gb drives but they do seem to register the usable space as if they where 250s. It is showing them as 320s under the drives screen.

Nope, in fact I have installed 500's and 750's in the 4500 (no modification or settings required).

Do the FULL CLEAN INSTALL and see what happens.

Steps to perform a FRESH INSTALL on the Snap Server.

NOTE: This will destroy all data and server settings on the Snap server.

At the DEBUG CONSOLE window (http://YourSnapServerName/admin/debug.cgi)
Enter the following command in the text field:

touch /nopivot

Press return

It will return a line

Reboot the snap server (Maintenance>Shutdown or Reboot)

Upon Reboot, the server will come up to Recovery Console in your web browser.
Recovery Console is indicated by the System LED alternating between amber and green.

At the RECOVERY CONSOLE screen, browse to your OS image (Recommended that this file be local on your workstation).
Select \"FRESH INSTALL\".

Note: The whole operation may take 10 minutes or more. Please be patient.

[blue68f100]

When you did a 1 x 1 swap of the drives, the old structure and capacity was matched. The only way to get it back is a new clean Install.

Delete all data if any.
break the raid5 array
power down and remove all drives except drive 1.
Then do a clean install. (as indicated above)
Use the mfg HD utility to do a quick format of the 3 drives.
Once the clean install is done.
You can hot swap the drives in.

[JBPuterguy]

That did it guys. It now shows the full capacity of the drives. I'm used to regular RAID 5 when you add larger drives, after you get the last one in, the array magically grows to take up all the new space.

Not that there was anything wrong with this machine, but I'm glad we got a new box and we'll use this one as a backup or an off site extention at a new office.

I thank you for all your help. I will continue to keep an eye on your site to see if I can pick up anymore tidbits to make my machines run better.

Thanks again
John