I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see if that works. I
connected the backplane of an old DL380R01 to the card with two 18.2
GB disks. The card is recognised because you see the initialisation
during the power-up of the PC and the card on its turn sees the disks.
But after starting Windows XP I cannot se the the disks.
What should I do to make use of this card and the disks? (if possible
at all)
I am not familiar with this controller, but if it is like any other disk array
or RAID controller, some added work is needed to set it up. These controller
typically have their own BIOS used to achieve some of the setup of the disks.
The setup includes the type of RAID (no RAID, drive mirroring, or more advanced
RAID), and may include special drive formatting required to have a single
partition span physical disk volumes. (Pardon me, but I forget the exact RAID
designations for the different types.)
Once the setup is done, you need to have Windows XP drivers for the controller.
Typically, these drivers are loaded from floppy (UGH!) during an early phase of
Windows installation. XP Server or Windows 2003 drivers may or may not work
with XP Pro or XP Home. Without XP drivers, the controller is not very useful
with XP, and you may have to attach the drives to another desktop-oriented SCSI
host adapter with built-in XP drivers. Two possibilities are Adaptec's 29160
and 39160, and there are also older Adaptec adapters to handle older
single-ended SCSI drives... Ben Myers
On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:29:26 -0700, Ruud <Ruud.Baltissen@abp.nl> wrote:
>Hallo allemaal,
>
>
>> I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see ....
>
>OOPS, that should be a 3200 controller, the one with the PCI slot. The
>5300 has an extended PCI slot.
>
>
>Kind regards,
>Ruud Baltissen
>
>http://Ruud.C64.org
>
"Ruud" <Ruud.Baltissen@abp.nl> wrote
> Hallo allemaal,
>
>
>> I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see ....
>
> OOPS, that should be a 3200 controller, the one with the PCI slot. The
> 5300 has an extended PCI slot.
Try alt.sys.pc-clone.compaq.servers - the NutCracker has probably got a
better answer than you'll get here.
>> I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see ....
>
> OOPS, that should be a 3200 controller, the one with the PCI slot. The
> 5300 has an extended PCI slot.
The SA5300 is PCI-X while the SA3200 is 32bit PCI.
* Ruud:
> Hallo allemaal,
>
> I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see if that works. I
> connected the backplane of an old DL380R01 to the card with two 18.2
> GB disks. The card is recognised because you see the initialisation
> during the power-up of the PC and the card on its turn sees the disks.
> But after starting Windows XP I cannot se the the disks.
>
> What should I do to make use of this card and the disks? (if possible
> at all)
Well, setting up an hardware RAID requires some configuration to assign
the physical drives to a logical array.
First, you have to go into the controllers BIOS setup (ACU, Array
Configuration Utility) and set up some RAID level. With two drives the
only you can do is RAID0 (striping, higher performance and a logical
drive that is as big as the capacity of both disks, but also higher risk
of data loss) or RAID1 (mirroring, average performance, only capacity of
one drive is useable, but higher reliability). Create a RAID array with
your drives and exit.
Second, Windows requires drivers for the controller. There are no
Windowsxp drivers for the Smart Array controllers, and the SA5300 is
quite old, but you should be able to use the W2k Server drivers from the
HP homepage.
After that Windows should see the controller and also the logical drive
in the storage management console. Just create a partition (I'd convert
the drive to "dynamic drive" and then set up a single partition) and
format it, and you're set.
But be aware that the SA5300 is very old, it's also relative slow, and
especially for RAID0 the 32bit PCI bus can be a bottleneck.
SA3200 Disk array controller in PC (was: 5300 Disk array controllerin PC)
* Ruud:
> Hallo allemaal,
>
> I put a 5300 Disk controller in an HP Pavilion to see if that works. I
> connected the backplane of an old DL380R01 to the card with two 18.2
> GB disks. The card is recognised because you see the initialisation
> during the power-up of the PC and the card on its turn sees the disks.
> But after starting Windows XP I cannot se the the disks.
>
> What should I do to make use of this card and the disks? (if possible
> at all)
Well, setting up an hardware RAID requires some configuration to assign
the physical drives to a logical array.
First, you have to go into the controllers BIOS setup (ACU, Array
Configuration Utility) and set up some RAID level. With two drives the
only you can do is RAID0 (striping, higher performance and a logical
drive that is as big as the capacity of both disks, but also higher risk
of data loss) or RAID1 (mirroring, average performance, only capacity of
one drive is useable, but higher reliability). Create a RAID array with
your drives and exit.
Second, Windows requires drivers for the controller. There are no
Windowsxp drivers for the Smart Array controllers but you should be able
to use the W2k Server drivers from the HP homepage.
After that Windows should see the controller and also the logical drive
in the storage management console. Just create a partition (I'd convert
the drive to "dynamic drive" and then set up a single partition) and
format it, and you're set.
I'd also recommend getting the latest controller firmware from the HP
website.
But be aware that the SA3200 is very old, it's also relative slow, and
especially for RAID0 the 32bit PCI bus can be a bottleneck. So don't
expect miracles out of it.
Re: SA3200 Disk array controller in PC (was: 5300 Disk array controller in PC)
Hallo Benjamin,
Herzlichen Dabk für deine Antwort!
> First, you have to go into the controllers BIOS setup ....
And how do I do this on a PC? On my DL380 I use a SMART CD but
here ???
> Second, Windows requires drivers for the controller.
Not needed for XP, that's for sure. See further...
> I'd also recommend getting the latest controller firmware from the HP
> website.
I did, but at start-up the software says this OS doesn't need this
driver.
> But be aware that the SA3200 is very old, it's also relative slow, and
> especially for RAID0 the 32bit PCI bus can be a bottleneck. So don't
> expect miracles out of it.
No, but it is the only card I have that fits in a PC. The 5300 for
example has this 64 bits PCI bus and that doesn't fit in my PC. But
imagine, a disk cabinet with 14 148 GB drives will give me over 1.5 TB
storage I don't think I will ever need or use it but just the idea
that it can be done was already exciting.
OK, at this moment I'm only using obselete 18 GB harddisks in a RAID 6
configuration. Drive bad? No problem, replace it on-the-fly!
I only found one eeny teeny problem: the noise those drives generate :
(
But now some real fun. Yesterday I got a crazy idea: I took the card
out of the PC, placed it in my DL380 G3, connected the disk cabinet
and powered everything up. After logging in, checking things and
powering down things again, I placed the card in the PC. And.... yes,
the PC now saw the disk cabinet with all its drives ))
What I haven't checked yet if the PC is capable of detecting that I
added other drives or replaced 18 GB ones for other types, like a 36
GB one. In the worst case I use my trick again.
Re: SA3200 Disk array controller in PC (was: 5300 Disk array controller in PC)
>"Ruud" <Ruud.Baltissen@abp.nl> wrote in message
>news:1183133376.888178.192630@u2g2000hsc.googlegr oups.com...
>Hallo Benjamin,
>
>
>Herzlichen Dabk für deine Antwort!
>
>
>> First, you have to go into the controllers BIOS setup ....
>
>And how do I do this on a PC? On my DL380 I use a SMART CD but
>here ???
SmartStart CD...
And you have no RBSU (Rom Based BIOS Utility) on a 3200.
So you put the card and the disks in the DL380, configure the RAID, and move
the card and disks to the new machine.
>> Second, Windows requires drivers for the controller.
>Not needed for XP, that's for sure. See further...
Nope - SA3200 pre-dates Windows XP (By a few years), so XP had a driver in
there as standard.
>> I'd also recommend getting the latest controller firmware from the HP
>> website.
>I did, but at start-up the software says this OS doesn't need this
>driver.
Do it on the DL380 from floppy.
>> But be aware that the SA3200 is very old, it's also relative slow, and
>> especially for RAID0 the 32bit PCI bus can be a bottleneck. So don't
>> expect miracles out of it.
>
>No, but it is the only card I have that fits in a PC.
If it works, cool. It's not exactly a commercial config, so you should not
expect top performance.
>OK, at this moment I'm only using obselete 18 GB harddisks in a RAID 6
>configuration.
RAID 6? Why???
Use RAID 5 and keep the extra drive as a spare. (or is that a typo?)
>But now some real fun. Yesterday I got a crazy idea: I took the card
>out of the PC, placed it in my DL380 G3, connected the disk cabinet
>and powered everything up.
That's not crazy at all.
> After logging in, checking things and
>powering down things again, I placed the card in the PC. And.... yes,
>the PC now saw the disk cabinet with all its drives ))
Of course - the SA3200 config is not lost - battery backup. And the config
is also help on the RIS tables on the disks.
>What I haven't checked yet if the PC is capable of detecting that I
>added other drives or replaced 18 GB ones for other types, like a 36
>GB one.
Nothing to do with the PC - It's drive subsystem, which is SMART / SCSI /
HP.
Mind you - if you replace a 18Gb with a 36Gb, it will just use the 1st 18Gb
of the new disk.
5300 Disk array controller in PC 
I don't think I will ever need or use it but just the idea
Linear Mode
