So I got the replacement HD yesterday, it turned out that the first disk probably wasn't broken at all. But given that the blister package of the first disk was broken, the package was set on the short side of the disk onto the bottom of the cardboard box with virtually no additional protection and the disk obviously being used before, it was a good idea to send it back.
Well, it turns out that the replacement disk was running for 77 hours at a previous customer as well. But it was neatly packaged this time, so chances are that I still have five years of warranty on the disk. Yet, the BIOS does not find this disk, either.
After finding nothing with a search on Seagate's web page, I went googleing. And what I found were several retailers warning that the Seagate SATA-II disks don't work on VIA SATA-I controllers. Oh, great, why doesn't mine tell me? Especially as SATA-II disks are supposed to switch to SATA-I mode automatically if the controller isn't SATA-I capable. Further googleing leads me to some web forum post with a link to a Seagate knowledge base article which describes how to lock their disks to SATA-I mode. After setting the jumper this disk finally works as expected.
In related news, I almost had a critsit (critical situation, i.e., management goes into headless chicken mode) with a support call here due to faulty ACPI tables on a dual-processor Opteron machine which kept turning the system time backwards -- that's quite deadly for transaction based databases... And of course we get all the blame for the crappy BIOS of the hardware vendor. Folks, for heaven's sake: DON'T USE PCs FOR MISSION CRITICAL PURPOSES!
Comments
lynard-.livejournal.com 18 years, 1 month ago
You know that with apple using now intel cpus the mac is a step closer to the pc? >;)
Link | Replywoelfisch.livejournal.com 18 years, 1 month ago
Macs have been very PC like since Apple started selling the New World Macs... But Apple has one advantage: as soon as you actually have a combination of hardware that works together Macs are rock solid.
Link | Replyzefirodragon.livejournal.com 18 years, 1 month ago
Uh-Oh... and I just ordered a couple of Seagate SATA2 drives (300gb), having also only SATA1 controllers (nforce3/Silicon Image). Thanks for the warning, and thanks for the link. Will surely come in handy when they arrive.
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