I’ve got a pile of disks from an old Stone. What now?

[someone2006]

Through sheer dumb luck, I’ve managed to stumble upon a handful of harddrives which were previously used in a Stone array with Flame. The owner says they’re either 9gb or 18gb SCSI and they say IBM on them. I’m not sure if they’ve got the magical firmware on them, but I’m guessing they do, since they were used in a post-production house and I doubt these guys would’ve been using hax0r’d non-Stone storage.

No enclosure, and I don’t have access to one.

What can I do with them? (besides throw them at a brick wall)

[Martin Furness]

Are they the original Discreet drives? Are they stamped? We were looking for some backups just a couple of weeks ago before we got the new Linux system. If they are stamped and the orig. Discreet drives (Discreet doesnt support those drives anymore) you can prob. sell them to people with existing stones.

[Sinan]

Generally, Discreet uses Seagate drives. So IBM sounds a little bit suspicious 🙁

[Anonymous]

We got some disks thinking that they were compatible but all of them are using different Firmware than the one that is used on the Discreet disks.
Any Ideas how to use them if ofcource there is a way.
Thanks
N

[Elaine Thomas]

kuban wrote:

Generally, Discreet uses Seagate drives. So IBM sounds a little bit suspicious 🙁

We had a Flint RT with Pebbles disk array that uses IBM disks.

[wwatkins12]

Posting some kind of model number would help determine exactly what type of drive these are. As someone else said, Discreet has been using Seagate drives for a long time, the last IBM drives I can think of were used in the Pebbles box for FlintRT (they were special IBM drives with a serial interface which never caught on at the time, although now serial is making a comeback at the low end with SATA and at the high end with SAS), and before that in the old DL12 arrays before the Stone&Wire stuff began (and those were 2GB drives).

9 or 18GB drives don’t really have much merchant value these days: they are literally not worth the power they would use if you tried to use them. The only people who would be interested in them would be someone who has an older Stone array (especially one which is no longer supported by Autodesk) and who wants to have spare drives available. You might get good karma by simply offering to give them to someone if they pay cost of shipping, or perhaps trading them for a case of beer?

JF

[Diogo Moutinho]

What are the Seagate fc drives that are used in a Stone stamped with…..a label saying ….Discreet Logic?

Or are they recognized just from the Firmware?

Thanks,

Richard

[wwatkins12]

If you run /usr/discreet/sw/disk-summary, you should see that the disks are reported as “STONE+WIR” or “DISCREET” rather than “SEAGATE”, i.e. they have customized firmware on them.

[Diogo Moutinho]

Quote:

If you run /usr/discreet/sw/disk-summary, you should see that the disks are reported as “STONE+WIR” or “DISCREET” rather than “SEAGATE”, i.e. they have customized firmware on them.

Thanks for your reply but I believe the fc drives I have are possibly not made to be used in a Stone (firmware wise). I have finally come to that conclusion after swapping out numerous fc drives w/o any luck. There are two channels with 5 drive slots in each channel. I have 4 drives installed in each channel. Only 8 drives w/sleds came with the Stone and I believe I did read a week ago or so that two bays are not used…one for parity and I forgot why another one was left blank. All the drives I have installed and swapped out for others in the Stone spin up and the individual hard drive light (green) lights up.

I have also just run either Channel A alone and then B alone (as well as all 8 drives at the same time) and still there is no green indicator lights lit on the back of the Stone after the drives are up and running. The Slave side has just a plate covering it. Since neither indicator light lights up after all the swapping out I did my best guess is that the drives don’t have the correct firmware and thus not able to be used in the Stone. I guess it is possible that both the green lights on the Master panel are burned but the drives do not show up in hinv either when everything is up and running. The Stone is connected via two DB9 copper fc cables to an Origin dual fc card. It’s worth a shot to run the command you mentioned and will do that today.

I originally bought the D9 with 9Gb fc Seagate drives (with 0006 firmware)and have since purchased a few more with the same firmware as well as some 18.2 Gb Seagate fc drives with similar firmware. Once I find the correct firmware for the fc drives I can look into finding the right ones, either 9 or 18 gb.

I have tried to find as much info on the D9 and fc drives for it but haven’t had a lot of luck in my search. On top of that I am just a newbie 😳

Richard

[Alonso Lopez]

I have a Stone D9-W Array with (5) 34.18GB drives. They have “magical” firmware

STON+WIR ST3366005FC SCSI Disk Device (Seagate Cheetah Drives)

I am looking to sell the Array with Drives and the Q-Logic QLA2200 PCI Fibre Channel Card.

The Array can hold up to 10 Drives, and is running perfectly.

It was never really used at my old company, and was discarded after the office moved.

I was about to post on ebay when a friend told me to check out this forum.

I don’t have a need for this type of storage, and would like to find it a good home.

If anyone is interested or knows of a good place to list, I’d appreciate it.

Thanks!
[email protected]

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