[rescue] rescuing an ailing U10...

[N. Miller]

On Oct 2, 2007, at 2:48 AM, Michael-John Turner wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 01, 2007 at 04:08:21PM -0700, James Hartley wrote:
>> Is there a way to initialize non-Sun branded hard drives such that
>> drives other than Sun-branded disks can be used on (older) Sparc- 
>> based
>> machines?  Am I correct assuming the Intel version of OpenSolaris
>> doesn't have this requirement?
>
> Was it a SCSI or IDE disk? I'd be surprised if you had problems  
> with an
> IDE disk, but SCSI is another story. I've had various non-Sun- 
> firmware SCSI
> disks (in particular, certain IBM firmware Seagates) that wouldn't  
> even be
> identified by the PROM without giving errors. I've heard that if  
> one finds
> the correct Sun firmware (eg in a Solaris patch), the drives can be  
> updated
> and will then work. Haven't tried it myself though.

If referring to SCSI disks, check the archives for rescue or geeks-- 
there was a discussion a couple of years back.  A couple of coworkers  
and I attempted using Compaq FW disks in a Sun box and after a week  
or so got corruption and disk failures, and had to remove them.  We  
asked here about FW and a couple of other places, and iirc, the  
consensus was that it "might" work--and as well--you might render the  
disks unuseable.  I think you'd be more likely successful if you had  
one of those disk cloning devices and were sure about the exact model  
#'s on the disk.

Not for the faint-hearted in my estimation.

=Nadine=