Dell / Snap 4100 Questions - Bad Drive, Upgrades, Etc.

[frankb3910]

Greetings - I first want to say how great this site is and that you guys rock, i have really enjoyed reading thru the posts and there is so much helpful information.

I have a Dell 705-N that has acted strange since day one. It has gone into "panic mode" several times while attempting to do a complete backup. In addition disc 3 has gone out on me twice now.

The first time disc 3 "went out" - it was indicated by a flashing light on the front panel. I was able to go into the web browser, select that orphaned drive, reformat, and mark it as a spare, then the raid rebuilt, and I was fine for 3 months.

Now I have that flashing light again, so I am going to replace the drive. These are 60GB Quantum Fireball drives. However THIS time around, the web interface does not allow me to select the orphaned drive, however I do have the flashing lights on the control panel. So I am guessing I'll just pop in the "new" drive and restart the machine - but does anyone have any advice on this?

Also I have decided (from reading the other posts) to upgrade the RAM at the same time to a 256MB chip. I am hoping this will help alleviate the "panic mode" problems that seem to happen under heavy disc usage.

My last request would be, could anyone send me the upgrade OS 3.4.807. I would SO appreciate that. The email is prepress at printperfect.com

In advance - thank you!

[Hallis]

First off Frank. Thanks for being nicely specific about yoru issue. A lot of times we get real vague information. Given what youve said i would advise just replacing the drive. Since it was your spare in the raid it should work without any problems. The system should pick it up, format it and then allow you to add it in. I dont know much more then that since I haven't gotten my hands on a Dell 705n or Snap M4100 (since they're the exact same). Hopefully one of my fellow snappers will have more info. The ram is a good idea also. 256 would be optimal for your config. You can upgrade that machine all the way to 120gb drives but no further. For some reason the hardware, regardless of OS revision, on the 4100/705n doesnt have LBA 48bit support, so large drives will only show up as ~137gb each.

As far as the OS is concerned. Upgrading probably wouldnt effect your problem. But 3.4.805 might be available from somebody here as it was freely available from Adaptec at one time.

Shane