novell 3.12 + AHA2940UW

[Gary Banfield]

Using the following hardware I am unable to create a netware partition.

Legend QDI P61440EX Excellent1
Intel Celeron Pii333 CPU
64MB DIMM memory
Seagate ST39140LW Ultra Wide SCSI Hard drive
AHA2940UW Interface card

Any Suggestions

[Felton Green]

Hi Gary,

This is the procedure I use:

1. Use a small IDE drive as the dos boot drive. This will free up all the space on the SCSI drive for use as a Netware partition. This is not saying that I use IDE drives as Netware partition drives. I use them as the boot drive only.

2. Double check the scsi id# of all the drives.
If your duplexing, highly recommended BTW, I put the even numbered drives on the boot controller and the odd numbered on the other. Personal quirk.

3. Check the termination on the last drive in the scsi chain, this is the only drive that is terminated.

4. Use quality SCSI cables and terminations.

http://www.scsipro.com have excellent teflon cables. I try to use only the higher quality cables since it pays off in the long run.

5. I also use an electical contact enhancement fluid called stabilant 22.

http://www.stabilant.com

I use it on ALL electrical connections. It solved many problems in the past, so I now use it for all new installs. Works well.

6. Perform a low level format of all scsi drives that the controller is handling.

7. Low level verify each scsi drive.

The controllers need to have the drives set up as to how the controller does its file transfer. The factory normally will do a low level format, but I have found the the controller that is handling the drives also need to do it.

8. Download the latest drivers for the controllers and use them.

9. I then remove all the scsi drives from the scsi chain but the 1st Netware drive. I create the netware partition and install NetWare.

10. I next install each drive and create a partition. I WRITE DOWN THE SCSI ID# AND PARTITION NUMBER OF EACH DRIVE AS THE PARTITION IS CREATED.

11. I create the sys vol and install Netware.

12. I mirror the sys vol.

13. Apply the 3.2 enhancement pack.

14. Mirror each partition as I create them.

15. Load os/2.nam and add long file name support at this time. Make sure you have lots of ram. LFN is a memory hog.

16. Download the latest updates and install them. The cdrom has 99% of the patches so you have to look at the release date of the cdrom. The patches can be found here:

http://support.novell.com/Ftp/Updates/nw/nw312/Date0.html

I also write down the types of drives, web site of all the mfr., amount of ram, controller info, installation date, NICs and any other info that I might need at 2:00 am when I'm brain dead. The last thing I do is use the config reader utiltiy and print out the server info and put it in the binder with all the other info. This is the baseline.

If I follow the above procedure, 95% of all disk I/O errors are resolved before they can jump up and byte me.

Here is a TID that may help: 2945634

You may have some problems with the size of the drive and the amount of ram you. I would goto 128 MB.

Felton Green
Novell Support Connection Volunteer SysOp

[Barry Schnur]

OK:

1) Does the 2940 Adapter recognize the drive?
2) Is this a new setup (ie is the ST39140LW the boot drive)
3) Have you checked for termination handling (I've found that with
the LW drives, you need to have termination AFTER the drive (I
leave the last connector on the cable for this purpose and place
an active termination connector on it).
4) Note, with 9G you will need more memory than the 64M you have
currently installed to support all available volume space.

Barry Schnur
Novell Support Connection Volunteer Sysop
http://support.novell.com/forums/
Please post replies ONLY via the Newsgroup

[Gary Banfield]

yes it does see the drive
I get the same results using the drive as the second drive in an existing 3.12 server that has been upgraded with the 32enh pack.
Novell 4.11 sees it no problem
I have the termination set as you suggest
I have tried in a different server with 128mb ram
I can use the drive with win95/98 perfectly

[Gary Banfield]

sounds like the text book installation that I use.
I do so many installations but this is the first with ultra wide.

Someone else has had the same problem but resolved it by moving away from this particular model harddrive.

[Barry Schnur]

Hmm, not sure here at all.

I configured a 3.12 server (with updates) using a single 18G W (not LW) drive. No problem
at all. I used an Initio 9100UW controller...

In my situation, I first added the drive as an additional drive (but with a 100M DOS
partition).

I then transferred data from a motley collection of drives (5 of them to be exact) to the
18G Seagate drive.

Eventually, I renamed the volumes and the final configuration is using the single 18G
drive under 3.12.

[Gary Banfield]

It appears from all my research no one has been successful with the LW drive and have opted for alternate drives or for Novell 4.11

Thanks for your help, it looks like I've got to use the drives for something else.

[Gary Banfield]

I'll let you know of any future developments

Thanks anyway

Gary

bsc...@home.com (Barry Schnur) wrote:
>Understood -- I really don't know why this doesn't work under 3x.

[Paul Meiners]

Gary
I have a couple of clients with the same exact controller and hard drive,
working just fine.
I installed these the Adaptec controller and Seagate drives about 7 months
ago. As of that time, I used 3.2 and downloaded newest patches.

One of these setups was duplexed, which was a true 20 hour learning
experience. With this setup, I had to use Dell's flavor of the driver to
get the drive to duplex.

This is a very fast drive/controller setup. You have to upgrade anyway,
now is the time