can the 1U Xserve SATA drives be replaced with larger aftermarket drives?

[samoir]

yeah i already found out what 1TB drive they use and got exactly the same brand and model number.
they don’t work – why i don’t know.

[khiltd]

Well if you ordered them from newegg or something they may have been pulling from old stock with a lesser firmware revision, and there are often subtle variations in products over time which may not always be obvious from catalog descriptions (Linksys WRT54G anyone?).

I have a script that will let you check when exactly yours was made here:

http://www.khiltd.com/seagate.html

If the result predates the card, there may be a compatibility issue. Apple’s markup on peripherals is beyond obscene, but if you aren’t positive the cheaper option is going to fly, sometimes your time is worth more than the hundred bucks you’d save buying elsewhere.

[samoir]

using your script:

1 Drive: Saturday Jan 12, 2008
2 Drive: Sunday Jan 13, 2008

And yes, i agree that, the time now has far outweighed the expense in buying the genuine 1TB ADM

[s_jobs]

We ran into this problem too. We have a 1U XServer (early 2008) and replaced three 80GB SATA Disks with Seagate ES.2 1000Gb SATA drives (product no: ST31000340NS). What seemed to resolve this issue was placing jumpers on the 1TB disks, therefore limiting the transfer-rate to 1.5Gb/s. Hope this helps you out as well.

[samoir]

thanks. did you also have the hardware RAID card installed?

[s_jobs]

yes we also have AppleRAIDcard installed. Tested with several reboots, everytime the disks come up fine now. No more degraded mirrors or missing disks. This should work for you too.

[samoir]

brilliant –  thanks for your help. I’ve had the Xserve on my desk for a few weeks, thrashing around the idea of purchasing replacement Genuine Apple drives, at the larger size and cost.
I’ll get some jumpers and look into the configuration you mentioned. I appreciate your post, and there might be a use for the 1TB drives after all.

cheers again

[samoir]

s_jobs , thanks for you post the other day. now have the 3x1TB drive in a RAID 5 array. thanks heaps, using the drive jumpers limiting the data rate worked a treat
cheers
samoir

[khiltd]

Neat. Sounds like it is a DMA timing issue then.

[Dr.Junk]

This is a very interesting thread. I just returned under warranty a 500GB Seagate ST3500320NS Barracude ES.2 drive which was part of a spontaneously recurring degraded RAID-1 array only to find the replacement drive exhibited _exactly_ the same characteristic as the “failed” drive. (i.e. exactly the same profile as described above). Attached the replacement drive via external SATA to my machine and gave it a thorough thrashing and then ran all the Seatools tests on the replacement drive only to find the drive was functioning perfectly (so I now strongly suspect the original drive was also not faulty).

I was left perplexed in a similar fashion to what people describe above. I ended up sticking the stupid 80GB pair of Apple supplied drives back in my brand new xserve to avoid wasting any more time/money. Like others the whole reason I purchased the pair of 500GB barracudas was to save money since the only other alternative to the 80GB drives from Apple was overpriced pair of 1TB drives.

I’m not going to bother putting the 1.5Gbps clip back on my drives and re-testing to see if this overcomes the apple raid dma timing issue, I feel like I’ve already wasted enough time with this pretty much undocumented problem. I also don’t feel like hobbling my drives to get it to function with apple’s raid, I’d prefer to save them and use them where they can be better utilised.

Leaves me with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth though…

[samoir]

yes, it left me perplexed for while, but the server now has three 1TB drives, all performing well in a RAID 5 array. And id rather not be tethered to the overpriced Apple Drives. So the outcome of starting this post has had a rewarding result, and was definitely worth the effort.

[getalong]

Glad to hear s_jobs post re: jumpers did the trick.

A few side notes re: ADMs – an unnamed Apple Enterprise Support Engineer dropped me a few little tid-bits about their “server-grade” drives…
– They perform extensive burn-in testing (I believe ~1000 hrs)
– Apple applies their own firmware to the drives
– They ensure each drive comes from a different batch (to minimize risk of an entire “bad batch” of drives).

This may not sound like a big deal, but the cost to perform these additional controls may explain a [i]little[/i] more about their higher price.

[Author]

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