>Steve Grose [log in to unmask]  wrote:
 ?'s about adding Seagate drives - longish
<snip>

>With the above said, I have the following questions:
>
>1. What should I be prepared for when installing a drive.  Such as do I
>need additional cables, mounting brackets?

You need experience taking PCs/computers apart.  How many times have you
taken PCs apart and repaired/upgraded hardware successfully? The 3000
937 is a large PC only more reliable - same power cables, same SCSI
cables, etc.  Know computer safety rules like wrist grounding straps,
turn power off first, number of devices on a SCSI bus, etc.. You need
TORX drivers(special screw drivers) sizes 10, 15, 20, 25 and 8 for super
tiny screws.

You need to know the layout of the 937.  Are all your disk drive bays in
the CPU cage full?  A 937 has 3 large bays on each side.  The bottom bay
on each side contains the power supplies.  The left side has 2 bays
which will hold 2 full height drives of 3 half-height drives (4 drives
if you make other adjustments).  Do you already have the drive brackets
that hold the drive and slide into the 937 bay?  Is your internal SCSI
bus full?  You could add 4GB or 9GB single-ended SCSI drives (50 pin) in
the CPU cage.  They both appear in IODFAULT.PUB.SYS.  If  you want to
use the FWD 9GB drives (68 pin) you need another SCSI card.  Do you have
2-slots available in the back of your 937 (one above the other) to hold
the FWD SCSI card?  What are you going to use to mount your disk drives
and connect to the SCSI card?  Do you have a UPS to support these
"external" FWD drives?

I've probably not covered everything, but enough to make you
uncomfortable of your abilities or armed with info to take on the
challenge.

>2. In the event of a drive crash. What's involved in restoring a system
to
>operational status again. Do I just do a complete restore, after drive
>installation. Or is it possible to just restore (1) volumes
information. I
>am using HP Turbo-Store software on MPE 5.5.

I also have never had a disk crash.  I would recommend that you have a
current SLT, a current backup (full and partials depending upon your
backup strategy) and the output file from the BULDACCT program handy.
You need all this if you lose system volumes.  If you have HP hdwr
support, call them to replace HP drives.  I have used all my non-HP
drives as user-volumes.  My HP volumes are system "long-name" volumes
and keep the system running. That way I can call HP to fix the system.
I take care of the user volumes.  User volumes are made to be taken out
of the system and the 3000 system keeps running.  If you are willing to
lose data changes since the last backup, you can replace the drive and
simply restore the data to the user-volumes.  You could use DISKUTIL to
save files on crashed disks.

>3. Is it possible to prepare a backup drive. So that when the time
arrives
>to put it into the system no unnecessary time is spent preparing it?
>

As long as you have experience using VOLUTIL there is not much
pre-installation work you can do. Drives already come formatted. You
might want to know how to run ODE and MAPPER which are only available
from the ISL> prompt.  To install my ST34371WD drives, I shutdown the
system and powered off everything.  Installed the drives with 4 screws
into the brackets.  HP6000 uses double brackets so 4 more screws to put
into case bracket.  (*** Side note *** I used the HP6000 disk array,
which is old but holds 5 disk drives.  You can get it on the resale
market.  I had to have the brackets for the HP6000.  The HP6000 doesn't
come with brackets.  Usually you get all the brackets when you purchase
the disk drives from HP. You also need the power cable for the HP 6000
power supply.  You can use jumpers to set SCSI addresses or one more
cable to use the dip switches in the HP6000***).  Attach SCSI and
PC-like power cables to drive. Close HP6000 cover, slide into 3k.
Attach SCSI cable from card to HP6000 and SCSI terminator.  Set
dipswitches if you didn't use jumpers on disc drives. Power everything
on - allow system to boot to ISL prompt.  RUN ODE/MAPPER to make sure
system sees the hardware.  START NORECOVERY.  LOGON as MANAGER.SYS.  Run
VOLUTIL.  Create your user-volume and master drive.  Add other drives as
needed.

Major recommendation! Attach a printer to your system console.  700/96s
have lots of memory. Print out everything in console memory so you can
retrace your steps should anything go wrong.

Brian Davidson
U.S. Army, Falls Church, VA

Tel:   (703) 681-9781   DSN 761-9781
Email: [log in to unmask]