Re: Disk replacement in an AS 200 4/166 ("Avanti")

1) I, too, have such an Alpha. As far as I know you can use any 5¼ 50-pin scsi 
disk. The 50-pin requirement alone restricts you to models you can use... My 
usual supplier currently has only two models listed: Seagate Barracuda 36ES 
II, 18GB for 180€ and 36GB for 270€. You should probably be able to find both 
more models and lower prices in Germany... I have two 9GB IBM disks in my 
Alpha, they work flawlessly. I'm not aware of any particular upper limit on 
size, but there might ofcourse be.

2) You can boot the rescue system from CD and use fdisk, mkfs, cp etc. I find 
the JumpStart CD easiest to boot from.

3) I prefer ARC since there is no easy way to handle multiple boot selections 
in SRM. Ihave NT4, Win2k and SuSE 7.1 + floppy boot & CD boot. (Windows can 
only be booted from ARC anyway). The only disadvantage is the boot floppy and 
SuSE CD have to be in the drives to let ARC pass the boot selection 
validation without errors, but the error can be safely ignored. I only switch 
to SRM on the rare occasions I need to boot VMS.

/Lennart


tisdagen den 10 december 2002 18.11 skrev Joerg Bruehe:
> Dear Alpha Linux users,
>
> I ask for your comments about this issue:
>
> My AlphaStation 200 4/166 (called an "Avanti", AFAIK?) has two internal
> SCSI disks, a RZ26L and a RZ28 (1 and 2 GB). I use it during office
> hours, it is powered off at night and during weekends. The machine is
> booted using the ARC bios.
>
> It is happening more and more that on power on / boot the second disk
> does not come up and I have to reboot, sometimes the whole boot is
> blocked
> (blue ARC screen) and only the "reset" button will help.
>
> I assume that the disks are dieing and I should replace them.
>
> 1) Will any SCSI disk (5,25", low height, single-ended, narrow) work in
>    this machine, or is there any specific requirement?
>    As low-capacity disks have gone out of fashion (but I do not need
>    large disks in it): Is there some upper capacity limit?
>
> 2) Once I get a new disk:
>    I would prefer copying my current file systems rather than install
>    anew, and I can connect a new disk in an external SCSI cabinet.
>    As the ARC / MILO boot sequence does understand the FAT file system,
>    I guess it is just a matter of "fdisk", several "mkfs", and
>    several "cpio -p" to copy everything, then the physical replacement -
>    or did I forget any essential step?
>
> 3) I remember several posting saying "prefer SRM over ARC":
>    Are there impelling reasons to do that switch, or should I go with
>    "if it ain't broken ...". I currently use SuSE 7.0 (kernel 2.2.16)
>    and feel no need to upgrade - this is used as an X terminal mainly.
>
> Thank you for hints,
> Joerg Bruehe

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