Aiby II and Dell 1600SC

[Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu]

On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 05:09, Basil Hussain wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> So, you have one of the Aiby II units as described on this page, yes?
> 
> http://www.maxtronic.com.tw/products/pur.htm

Yep, that's the one (Aiby II...the other ones are Firewire/USB2.0).

> May I ask, as the Aiby unit itself does its own RAID processing, why you are
> connecting it to the external channel of your PERC4/SC card? It doesn't make
> sense to have an external RAID unit controlled by an internal RAID
> controller (you are trying to do IDE->RAID->SCSI->RAID). The only possible
> way you might get this to work would be to have the Aiby 'drive' (as the
> PERC sees it) configured as JBOD, or possibly a one-disk RAID 0.

Well, the PERC4/SC has an external channel, so it's there to be used. 
Thing is, it has to be used properly, and well, I wasn't doing that. 
See below.

[snip]
> Being single-channel, your problems are likely to do with clashing SCSI IDs
> or termination. 
[snip]

Turned out that the problem was indeed related to the SCSI ID being used
on the Aiby II.  Up until now, we had never had a need to look at the
RAID controller configuration.  So, when I originally connected the Aiby
II to the controller and then reviewed the devices detected by the
PERC4/SC, I saw the two internal drives at IDs #0 and #1, and what
appeared to be the Aiby II at ID #6.  Since I hadn't seen the config
without the Aiby II connected to the external SCSI port, I assumed it
was okay: boy was I wrong.

Frustrated that the PERC4/SC wasn't working, I cleared the existing
configuration and created a new logical drive for the internal HDs, but
this time without the Aiby II connected. After rebooting, I noticed that
device ID #6 was still being used (it displayed PROC...btw, what is
that??  Some kind of co-processor or something on the card itself?). 
So, I changed the device ID on the Aiby II to 5 from 6, and viola, I was
able to create a new logical drive for the Aiby II at ID #5 (used RAID
0, but the Aiby II is itself in RAID 5).

As for the filesystem errors, I was able to correct them with a fsck. 
Everything is now running smoothly.  If I had known that ID #6 was in
use from the beginning, I would have chosen another one and not have had
an issue at all.  Oh well...live and learn I suppose.

Anyway, thank you very kindly for replying.  Your comments/suggestions
guided me towards the eventual solution.  Thanks a lot!

Regards,

Ranbir

-- 
Ranbir
Systems Aligned Inc.
www.systemsaligned.com