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Adaptec 3805 – It’s rubbish

An update on my previous posting about the Adaptec 3805 and my troubles with getting compatible drives.

I’ve been running a RAID-5 with the 3085 using 4 Samsung SpinPoint F3’s for about 2 weeks, and two days ago it started to give problems. The fourth disk in the array just dropped out, with no visible SMART issues or physical defects.

So, after waking up to this news I added it back into the array (probably not a great idea, but usually its fine). The moment the full initialization completed, something occurred that caused one of my Virtual Machines running from that RAID array to stop functioning (it was a mail server). There was another machine on there with much lesser activity, that kept running without a problem – but it did all but destroy the other virtual machine. Luckily, i have backups.

Not only did it knock off one of my virtual machines, it kicked out a different disk from the array, and started complaining again. So then I broke down, and ordered 2 ES.2 disks from Newegg which are on the HCL for this controller. However, 8hrs later, the controller barfed up completely and started giving timeouts to the host to the logical drive – even with 3 perfectly useable drives. The host became very unstable, i had to shut down the virtual machines, and reset the machine (thank god for Lights out control).

Upon reboot, the logical raid-5 array was unusable, and had to be forced online. I copied the two files that i absolutely had to have, and finally destroyed the array. When i go up to the data center again, I’m removing this card and burying it. Going to go back to my trusty Highpoint RR2224 which I’ve had for over 5 years now, without a single glitch.

Done.

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Adaptec 3805 Compatibility Issues with Western Digital Blacks

Hello, a quick post / announcement that the Adaptec 3805 SAS Raid controller has compatibility issues with Western Digital Caviar Black drives. I don’t know if its an issue with all capacities of the Black series, but the ones i had were the 1TB ones, model number WDC-WD1001FALS-0.

After doing some research, it appears that the WD Blacks are NOT on the HCL for the Adaptec 3805 controller, but it took me some time to find this. I hope this post helps anyone who was going to go down this route.

Since i’d already gotten the WD Blacks, I ended up using Samsung Spinpoint F3’s from some of my servers. The WD Blacks work fine on Intel ICH Raid. I think next time, I’ll stick with these Samsungs. Cheap, good warranty, and FAST.

Now in general, why can’t Western Digital make standards compliant drives? I could easily blame Adaptec as well, but in this case, i think it has to be WD’s fault. They are known to make ATA drives that don’t work the same way as everyone else. How hard can it be? Even Samsung got it right.

Update, see my second post on this

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Googles gone Goal!

My friend pointed out to me that Googles, gone Gooooooooall!

image

Search for world cup, and look at the bottom! Less than 24hrs to go!

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Enabling xp_cmdshell

A quick post on how to enable xp_cmdshell on Sql 2005/2008/2008R2

EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘xp_cmdshell’, 1
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO
EXEC sp_configure ‘show advanced options’, 0
GO
RECONFIGURE
GO

Done.

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I think ESPN got it!

*Yawn*. Its good to stretch once in a while, get some blood to some relaxed muscles.

Waking up at 5.30am on a Saturday is normal behavior for me now. Get up, brush my teeth, and wonder downstairs and turn on the telly. You know its early when the cats ignore you, while you stumble across the dark floor to the sofa and fumble around for the remote.

Regardless, turned on the telly. Its June 5th, 5 days before WC2010 starts, 5.30am. I press the two power buttons, one for the TV, one for the dish network receiver. After about 5 seconds of eye rubbings, i hear a familiar voice. A very soothing, familiar voice. Martin Tyler.

At first, i make sure its not a rerun of a EPL game on Fox Soccer Channel. Then slowly, i realize that his color commentator, is John Harkes. Instantly I’m satisfied with something. I feel that ESPN got it right.

It was 5.30am on June 5th, and Australia were playing a pre world cup warm up against the USA, and it was being shown live from a tiny stadium in South Africa with less than 7,000 people in the crowd – on a pitch that looked like an empty field in the middle of the African jungle.

ESPN got it right. The commentary pairing of MT and JH was good, it wasn’t boring – even during the boring parts of the game. They weren’t even talking down to me as a viewer, they were just commentating. That was sweet.

Well done ESPN.

But wait! There’s more! After the game, ESPN showed a nice little piece on the Robben Island soccer league in South Africa. A very nice 30 minute segment about how the comings of a new government were practiced in the form of a full on “professional” football league within a prison.

Well done ESPN.

But wait! THERES MORE! E-60 had another segment on “saacker”. 3 short documentaries. The first was about Clint Dempsey, the 2nd was a great emotional piece about the U17 girls national team from Haiti after the quake, and finally a 3min segment on the craziest par 3 19th hole in South Africa, where the Tee is at the top of a mountain, and the green is a thousand feet below.

Well done ESPN.