SUMMARY: Any third-party drives recommended for a Sparc-10?

From: Karl Vogel (vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil)
Date: Thu Jan 07 1999 - 17:55:31 CST


Sorry for the late summary, but I wanted to give this system plenty of
time to burn in (or burn up).

Original message on Thu, 8 Oct 1998:

> We have a Sparc-10 with a 424-Mbyte internal drive, and I'd like to
> bump that up to about 1-Gbyte without replacing the entire machine.
> I called SunExpress and was told that they don't have anything which
> fits the bill.
>
> Has anyone had any good experiences with third-party shops that might
> be able to handle this?

Our solution was to use a spare 1.1G drive, Seagate ST51080N-0958.
The drive was replaced on 27 Oct 1998.

I reinstalled the operating system from CD with no problems (other than
a power outage which I can't blame on the SS10), and since then the
system has run like a champ. It's sitting in an air-conditioned room,
and the case is no warmer to the touch than it was before, but I don't
really want to draw any conclusions about heat.

-- 
Karl Vogel
ASC/YCOA, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433, USA
vogelke@c17mis.region2.wpafb.af.mil

Abbreviated replies follow: ------------------------------------------------------------------- >> On Thu, 8 Oct 1998 14:37:48 -0600 (MDT), >> Tim Carlson <tim@santafe.edu> said:

Just buy any old SCSI drive. The Sparc-10 has regular type internal SCSI connectors and I have a large number of third party drives running in 10s (well, at least I used to)

[He also had a few 2-Gbyte internal drives in Sparc-10s]

------------------------------------------------------------------- >> On Thu, 8 Oct 1998 16:02:00 -0400, >> Mark.Langenbahn@Central.Sun.COM (Mark Langenbahn - Southern Ohio) said:

I'd be VERY careful about putting a 1GB internal drive in an SS10. We never qualified one because we could not dissipate the heat generated. Anyway, a couple of choices. One, put a second 424MB drive in it. Two, remove all drives and put a single 1GB drive. Note that even though I work for Sun, this is not a Sun supported configuration. You do it at your own risk.

A 4.2GB external SCSI drive is $875 list. You'd get a 22% discount GSA price. For the SS10, you'd also need a 50 - 68 pin scsi cable. That's about $45 list.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 13:29:22 -0500 From: Greg Polanski <greg_polanski@adc.com>

I use datalink, 612-946-7808, Greg Felling. Or Rave, 800-386-8666 or Just about any vendor that posts to comp.sys.sun.wanted.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:34:00 -0500 From: gfranczyk@carbomedics.com

You can buy an old seagate baracuda 4gb for pretty reasonable now adays... probably 250-300 dollars.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 98 14:56:51 EDT From: klarsen@enterprise.afit.af.mil (Kristin (Kris) Larsen)

Any disk from Seagate, Quantum or Western Digital will do, but you must make sure that you have the proper disk carrier and the cables for connecting to the scsi connector. Be glad you don't have a sparc 20, eek, those carriers and cables are proprietary.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 15:27:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Evans <tkevans@eplrx7.es.dupont.com>

We like Dynamic Computer Products, 800-714-SCSI. Can't say if they (or anyone) still handle "small" drives like 1GB.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 14:30:40 -0500 From: "Christopher L. Barnard" <cbar44@tsg.cbot.com>

I have dealt with and can recommend:

concorde group (800) 333-2786 spring lake comp. exch. (800) 826-2196 solar systems (800) 253-5764 world data products (800) 553-0592

Any of these folks can sell you new, used, or refurb drives, either Sun-barcoded or not, that will work just fine in your SS10. All should give you some sort of warranty as well.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 15:43:01 -0500 From: Chad Price <cprice@molbio.unmc.edu>

I use RepTech for 3rd party drives. Mark Parker <mparker@reptechcanada.com>

They can furnish the drives, you need to know how to put them in. I've had no problems with 3rd party drives and I currently have 3 external ones.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:43:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Chris_Marble@hmc.edu

I put a Seagate ST34572WC in an Ultra 2 with no problem. My favorite vendor is R-squared/Vanguard. Call them at 800-840-6090.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 15:37:16 -0500 From: MARC.NEWMAN@chase.com

Any SCSI 3 1/2" half high should work fine.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 17:18:24 -0500 (CDT) From: klfergason@amoco.com (Kelly Fergason)

Sun used the Seagate ST11200 or ST31200 drives. 31200 is the half-height version of the 11200. There are several versions of the Seagate Hawk series which would work. ST 31230, etc.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 98 18:55:17 EDT From: carlo@hub.eng.wayne.edu (Carlo Musante)

Try http://www.dirtcheapdrives.com I use them quite a bit. They have both new and used drives. You will probably find that 1GB SCSI drives are becoming extinct. A 2GB Quantum Fireball drive goes for $205.00 at DC.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 08 Oct 1998 16:57:04 -0700 From: Jonathan.Loh@BankAmerica.com

any scsi drive will work. But not in an SSA, you must get drives from sun for that.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1998 23:56:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Reto Lichtensteiger <rali@meitca.com>

Call Insight and get a 2GB Seagate Barracuda w/ the 80 pin SCA connector. Then use the plastic cradle/insert/carrier doohickey that holds the 424 to install the 2 gig'er. Boot from CDROM and tell it to do magic on the new disk -- it'll do a proper format, then partition as you see fit ...

I've done this a number of times (!) and haven't had any problems.

I run the machines in an air conditioned server room with good airflow, so I haven't seen any problems with heat. I've only had one such replacement drive go bad; that was in an SS20 and it curled up within a week of installation, so I sent it back and got another one, which has been in there for about a year and a half. Nowadays, I go with 4GB drives 'cos they're cheaper than the 2s were then :-(

Reto

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 09:24:11 +0200 (MET DST) From: Sebastian Benoit <benoit@Mathematik.Uni-Marburg.de>

Transtec, Germany sells Ultra-SCSI drives for the SS10. They say in their product catalog that

1) There are no heat problems with the SCSI-drives with 7200rpm

2) Ultra-SCSI drives run at normal Fast-SCSI speed on controllers that don't support Ultra-SCSI.

3) They sell IBM and Seagate drives, check out http://www.transtec.de/adb/WWW_cat.main.plp?Z/D/E/D/intsun

They sell the following for the SparcStation 10: Seagate Barracuda 9LP (ST39173N) IBM DGHS39100U IBM DDRS39130U Seagate ST39140N Seagate ST34572N Seagate ST34573N Seagate ST34520N IBM DDRS34560U

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 08:14:43 -0400 (EDT) From: rkutter@mbvlab.wpafb.af.mil

We've had no problems adding just about any SCSI drive to a SPARC 10. I don't think you really have to go with any certain vendor or brand of drive for it to work.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Oct 1998 12:42:37 +0000 From: Eugene.Waugh@sensors.wpafb.af.mil

We have nearly 40 assorted SPARCstations here in our lab, and we deal almost exclusively with Rave Computer for our 3rd party hardware needs. They are on the web at http://www.rave.net or 1-800-966-7283 by phone.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 09 Oct 1998 11:14:34 -0400 From: Harry Ford <hford@economeister.com>

I would recommend a new drive if possible, especially if this is a prod. machine. Sun no longer makes 1gig drives, however, but as long as you get a good warrentee or have it inspected by sunservice, you'll be fine. Most large resellers of sun equipment are fairly knowledgable about what you'll need (RAVE is a good one).

One thing to keep in mind are heat issues with larger drives -- make sure the drives and the case don't get too hot -- this is especially a problem with the older sparcs, and older drives. People have recommended to me that I not even try to install 7200 rpm drives in old sparcs.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 9 Oct 1998 17:02:15 -0000 From: burgiel@math.uic.edu

Putting the internal drives in various Sun computers was trouble free as well, although that might be because we reinstalled the OS each time we replaced a drive.

As far as I can remember, we just stuck another 2GB drive in our Sparc without worrying about heat. It lived for six months in a big dusty room with no particularly effective cooling, and then moved down to a warmer, smaller room with slightly less dust where it's been cheerfully serving files ever since. (We blew the dust out during the move.)

We have had overheating problems with an UltraSparc in the big dusty room, but those are the only overheating problems we've had.

It looks like we started with a 1GB drive in the Sparc and added another 2GB drive. I'm sending you the relevant output from df and also a pile of info. on the machine.

--- cut here ---

/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 21199 12521 6568 66% / /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s6 105543 82702 12291 88% /usr /proc 0 0 0 0% /proc fd 0 0 0 0% /dev/fd /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s4 106047 78533 16914 83% /var /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s7 19183 13 17260 1% /export/home /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s5 446967 101243 301034 26% /localopt /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s3 139391 108315 17146 87% /usr/openwin

/dev/dsk/c0t4d0s0 967282 673480 197082 78% /opt /dev/dsk/c0t4d0s1 967600 349793 521047 41% /usr/local

DATE: Fri Oct 9 11:57:15 CDT 1998 MODEL: SUNW,SPARCstation-10 CPU: TI,TMS390Z55 SunOS RELEASE: 5.5.1 MEMORY: 128MB SWAP: 224.5MB total, 23.0MB used, 201.5MB available

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1998 15:46:35 -0400 (EDT) From: "Scott Ebright" <scott.ebright@ypmail.wpafb.af.mil>

It has been a while since I've opened any of our Sparc 10's, but I know we have two drives in them. The second drive is 2.1GB and I believe it is just a standard Seagate SCSI.

Two of our Sparc 10 systems have had two drives in them for about 3 years. When the second hard drive was added, we also put in a faster processor, an external tape drive, an external CD-ROM, and more memory. NO special cooling was added. We had what appeared to be a heat related problem in Mar 98. After a thorough "dusting-out", the system worked fine. We went ahead and did some spring cleaning on all the systems to avoid any other such problems. I should also mention that our Sparc 10's are powered on nearly 24x7. The 2.1GB hard drive was ordered from Sun, part# X568A.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 15:18:06 -0400 From: "Daniel Large" <Daniel.Large@wpgate1.wpafb.af.mil>

We were able to obtain a SCSI harddrive with the same controller cable connection as the sparc 10. We had to configure the hd so that it would boot on slice 3 of the SCSI, as the people who delivered it to us made the boot sector slice 1 which may be common for other servers.

I'm not an expert, by any means; and sometimes know just enough to get in trouble, but we were able to get the hardware on our sparc 10 upgraded so we could put Solaris 2.6 os on the unit.

------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 10:02:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Dan Simoes <dans@ans.net>

A vendor suggested that I could use the ST34520N drive, 4.55Gb, SCSI-3 ultra. At $250 street price, it's a steal.

------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harvey Wamboldt <harvey@iotek.ns.ca>

Heat is a problem on larger, faster disks. Use an external drive, ensure it has a good fan, room for air flow around the drive, and clearance around the air intake and exhaust ports. For new smaller drives of the same size and speed as older drives, I think power consumption has gone down a tad since they are spinning less mass and have slightly better bearings these days.

------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rik Schneider <rik@netasset.com>

As long as you can get the right cabling for the drive and your power supply is up to the job you shouldn't have any problems. Most of the current crop of drives run a quite a bit cooler than earlier drives of the same capacity.

I am currently using an IBM 5400 RPM 2.3G drive in a SS-1+ in place of the original 3600 RPM 300M. The case is now cooler and the system draws less power at start-up.



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