SUMMARY:Ultra 5 - add second hard drive question

From: Lisa Weihl <lweihl_at_cs.bgsu.edu>
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 17:32:13 EST
Recently I asked the following questions about adding a 2nd hard drive to 
an Ultra 5:

Here are my questions:
 >
 > 1. I just tried and was able to piggyback a hard drive in the same bracket
 > where the floppy drive already is. There isn't a lot of space between the
 > hard drive and floppy drive but there is air space there. Can I do
 > this? Is there an issue of heat build up because the two items are so
 > close? If I this works why would Sun recommended removing the floppy?
 >
 > 2. The spare drive I have is a Seagate ST 320413A (20GB). Would that
 > work? I recall reading that 20GB is the maximum size you can put in an
 > Ultra 5. I found a Sun replacement part page that listed Seagate ST320414A
 > as the replacement drive. In this case do the model numbers make that big
 > a difference?
 >
 > 3. Anything special I have to look for with the IDE cable I need to get? I
 > mean will any IDE cable work as long as it has the extra connector for a
 > second device?

As one list member was kind enough to point out this was in the archive.  I 
did hit that post during my web search but missed the part in the summary 
where someone did indicate they had installed the hard drive above the 
floppy without removing the floppy.  Still I received some good info from 
others that will add to the archive so I'm summarizing here.  In my case, I 
did end up adding the drive above the floppy using the same bracket that 
the floppy is already in.  I put it on the channel with the CD-ROM and had 
to order a cable to get enough spacing between master and slave device for 
that arrangement to work.  As many pointed out Sun makes cables that want 
devices to use Cable Select since I didn't get a Sun cable I followed the 
advice and specifically set the drive to Master and the CD to Slave.  I 
also had to get an extender for the power to reach the hard drive 
easily.  I hope this info helps someone in the future.  I also had no 
problem with Solaris recognizing my Seagate 20 GB drive even though the 
model number didn't match exactly what they list for the machine.

Thank you to the following for the great information provided:  Steve 
Mickeler, David Rieger, Dan Simoes, Sandy Gordon, Tim Chipman, Kevin 
Reichart, Alex Kamalov, Paul Richards, Ric Anderson, Ted John, David Evans, 
Jeff Kao, Al Hopper, Jason Grove, Steve B., Thad MacMillen, Siva 
Santhakumar, Peter Duncan.


Summary of their advice.........................

We have a bunch of U5's with 80 gb drives in them.
You need solaris 8 for over 20GB drives I think.

Use a SCSI card and add external drives  (My note:  I've done this but it's 
pricey at around $600-700 for a SCSI card, I wanted a cheap solution to 
just get more space)

Sun uses "Cable Select" with its IDE drives in the Ultra 5 and 10. This
means that you need a special kind of IDE cable to connect the drives.
Rather than using jumpers on the drives to select the master and the slave,
both drives should be jumpered to use cable select, and the cable will
determine which is the master and which is the slave.

AFAIK, sun recommends the floppy-bay mount because it is the only
"appropriate" space where a drive can be "properly" mounted with a nice
bracket setup. AFAIK, IDE drives are pretty robust though so as long as
one face has some air circulation, you probably are OK squeezing it in
anywhere it fits.
IDE ribbon cables are all pretty generic. Only really difference is
support for UDMA66 devices, something not present in Ultra5 systems
anyhow (I think?) so this probably isn't an issue. UDMA 66 IDE ribbon
has 80 instead of 40 wires to the ribbon. Typically it is a "finer"
cable, resembles more in appearance an internal SCSI ribbon cable
(whereas the old UDMA33 and slower IDE cables, 40 wire, are "more" in
appearance and flexibility like a floppy disk ribbon...
  (My note:  I ordered one of these for the spacing and they are backward 
compatible)

I have a 60GB drive running in my Ultra 5. Under Solaris 8.
I believe you can run 32GB under Solaris 7,
My 60GB drive is an IBM GXP60.
(My note: it seems the limitation on drive size is the version of Solaris 
NOT necessarily the hardware)

I recently added a 40 Gig drive to an ultra-5 and I found it to be easier than
I thought it was going to be.
I mounted the drive in top of the floppy, as you have found works, and haven't
noticed any heat-related problems. The toughest ting to find was an IDE cable
that was long enough to reach from the mother board to the CDROM then to my 
2nd
drive. I scrounged around tech. services till I found one that was about 9",
then messed around with the routing until it fit.

Sun IDE cables are not "normal". They are built to use the "cable select"
feature
to specifiy master and slave. If you put in a "normal" IDE cable, you'll
need
to rejumper the existing drive from CS (Cable Select) to Master (or Slave)
before things will work. Max disk size varies with OS revision. See the
Solaris FAQ at
http://www.science.uva.nl/pub/solaris/solaris2.html

I put the hard drive on top of the floppy drive without a problem. The
secondary disk kit from Sun includes a steel frame. You must take out the
floppy drive in order to put it in. However, I didn't use the frame so that
I have the floppy and secondary HD drive.

No problem - but you should pick a drive based on it's power consumption
numbers. We've used Maxtors in several U5s for that very reason.
Also: drives need airflow accross the HDA (Head Disk Assembly). The drive
does not "care" which way the air flows (front to back, back to front, one
side to the other etc). But it does need airflow! So you jury rig some
small fans (remove some 12V fans from CPU heatsink assemblies) using copper
picture wire (thru the fan mounting holes) or velcro pads etc. to secure
them. If you use the picture wire setup, ensure that there is no way for
the wire to move that'll cause a short circuit. You can always form a loop
at each end and secure it under some existing sheet metal screws.

  Heating is not problem I have 4 U5 running with second HDD, no complains
from clinet (heavily used dev boxex)

I did this two months ago and I didn't have any issues. Just a boot -r (if
can reboot) else while system is up devfsadm (Sol 8) or drvconfig
->devlinks->disks will let you to see
the disks through format.






**********************************************************************************
Lisa Weihl, System Administrator	E-mail:	lweihl@cs.bgsu.edu
Department of Computer Science	Office:	Hayes 225
Bowling Green State University		Phone:	(419) 372-0116
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0214	Fax:	(419) 372-8061
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Received on Tue Feb 5 16:33:15 2002

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