Increasing Hard Drive size on DS2A DX16C

[Gubins 0]

Hi, I'm new here. I have posted this under another topic for a D4 but I'm not getting any response so I have opened a new Topic for this issue.

 

I have read this forum and have been working on a DS2A DX16C with the two original 160GB Maxtor drives. It has firmware 3.1 (169). The owner wants me to upgrade it to two 500GB drives since the 160s are begining to play up, probably from old age. I bought two 500GB WD drives designed for this purpose with 8MB cache etc. Having followed all the instructions I found in this forum the new 500Gb drives would not work and it got stuck at the boot loader. I had to reformat the old drives as they were causing problems and tried them again from the backup I had made of the main drive earlier. That worked OK. I tried two 250Gb hard drives and they worked OK too.

 

My questions are;

Is there a limit on size? I suspect a limit might be 320Gb each drive, is that true? I have read where some people have installed 500Gb drives, a total of 1Tb, and even 750Gb drives, a 1.5Tb total. I think it was the same model. Can this really be done? Do I need to make any other changes to have larger drives? Does it need any motherboard changes?

 

I hope someone can throw some light on this as the claims for larger drives led me to buy the 500Gb drives. I probably won't get my money back on those if it won't work at that size.

 

HELP Please??

 

thanks to anyone who can help.

 

cheers

Barry

[Soundy 1]

Well, I googled "DS2A DX16C" and found a PDF of a datasheet on DM's website... in that is the following:

At time of press the maximum internal storage for the DS2 with

internal CD is 600GB, providing 2 months of digital recordings at a

factory default setting of 6PPS with 18KB file size

 

That seems to answer your question... and it appears that a pair of 320GB drives may not work either.

 

Immediately before that it says:

Hard disk sizes are constantly increasing in capacity. Please contact

customer service or consult the DM web site, for latest available disk size

configurations for the Dedicated Micros product range.

 

So you might want to check with DM to see if there's a firmware update, either available now or planned in the future.

 

Full document is here: http://www.dedicatedmicros.com/europe/files/support_docs/f152

[Gubins 0]

Hi, thanks Soundy for the prompt reply!

 

I had googled before and not found that specific brochure but at least it confirms my suspicions. Anyway it may be that the 600 is rounded and that 320Gb x 2 might be OK as 300Gb are not available, anyway I have no intention of paying to find out. I'm stuck with two 500Gb drives unless there is an update in the firmware. I'll chase that up.

 

That link went to a brochure which says that the DS2 with CD has 600Gb limit. Given my past experience with model variations I probably saw that as only applying to the CD model - my mistake but plausible. There is also a table on Disk use to Days of recording and it goes as high as 825 Gb suggesting this may apply to a model in the range. It certainly was not commented against. My point being this info leads me to think it would take larger drives. An easy mistake to make when you come from the IT world I guess.

 

I'll also look at external drives with a SCSI-IDE converter. I can add these as external drives I guess, not RAID though since it wastes 500Gb and it isn't that critical.

 

If you have any advice on my points then I look forward to hearing from you. Otherwise thanks again, I appreciate your help and clarifictaion.

cheers

Barry

[Soundy 1]

I had googled before and not found that specific brochure but at least it confirms my suspicions. Anyway it may be that the 600 is rounded and that 320Gb x 2 might be OK as 300Gb are not available, anyway I have no intention of paying to find out. I'm stuck with two 500Gb drives unless there is an update in the firmware. I'll chase that up.

Could always use the 500s for something else... being an IT guy I'm sure you have lots of uses for them

 

That link went to a brochure which says that the DS2 with CD has 600Gb limit. Given my past experience with model variations I probably saw that as only applying to the CD model - my mistake but plausible.

Could go the other way, too - that the unit with CD has higher capacity than the one without.

 

OR, it might be possible to add another drive in place of the CD drive... which if the drive size is limited to 300GB each, would bring you to 900GB, and the chart only goes to 825 because that follows the numbers they're using.

 

But that's a long-shot I'd say. I dunno about DM specifically, but my experience with these types of units is that they're fairly limited in how much you can tinker with the hardware, and a connection that's meant for an optical drive will ONLY work with an optical drive (note there's nothing about a DVD drive anywhere in the brochure, suggesting that won't either).

 

My point being this info leads me to think it would take larger drives. An easy mistake to make when you come from the IT world I guess.

Depends how long you've been in IT, I suppose... there was a time not too long ago that a lot of PC BIOSes wouldn't support drives over ~130GB, or if they did, Windows didn't. Drives bigger than that would simply show as 130GB available.

[Gubins 0]

Yeah to all your points. I have been in IT since the 70s, starting by using them as tools in R&D. Yes I know all about drive sizing and memory constraints etc. But those restrictions were progressively overcome and I don't know the age of the equipment in this field and DM may have chosen to limit sizes as well as they seem to do some things differently you might say! I don't know so I was just making gross assumptions which I got wrong. Oh well. As an excuse I am operating on low right now with busted disks L5/S1, L4/L5, L3/L4 so I forgive myself.

 

It isn't a CD model and DVDs won't work if it’s like anything else. I agree it wouldn't take a HD on that channel for your reasons. I assumed that channel was backup as you wouldn't record for long on a single CD. I did try formatting the 500 as a 160 just to try it but that failed as I expected it would. I tried because you just never know with some equipment unless you're already experienced on it.

 

I could use the drives elsewhere but they are dearer than normal drives and most IT customers would be looking for competitive results. Might be good on a server though with the 24/7 quality. I do have one client needing a larger RAID set soon.

 

I looked at external use using a SCSI to IDE converter (not cheap) but I think external drives are only used for backup. I'm still checking on that, nothing has been 100% clear. If you know about that could you let me know?

 

Firmware updates aren't likely as they made clear statements about the new models being more flexible but not older DS2 models.

 

I really appreciate your help.

Barry

[Soundy 1]

... DM may have chosen to limit sizes as well as they seem to do some things differently you might say!

I doubt they would intentionally set a size limit... more likely, just used a controller or supporting firmware code that at the time, had a limitation to it, similar to the LBA48 issue. It might be something that's addressable through a firmware update... or not, if the limitation is in the hardware.

 

I assumed that channel was backup as you wouldn't record for long on a single CD.

I have yet to see a surveillance DVR that records its footage straight to optical disc - they're pretty much universally there for backup/export of video.

 

If you know about that could you let me know?

I have NO idea. Everything so far is just speculation and educated guessing based on the DM brochure, and just general experience with a variety of systems.

 

Best course of action, I think, is talking to DM support directly. It might help to ask for second-tier/second-level support, though, since if they're like a lot of larger outfits, their first-level support guys are probably mostly just reading off troubleshooting scripts and aside from a select few, aren't all that bright.

[Gubins 0]

Thanks again. I will call DM but the previous time I did I found what I have seen everyone else report. They can be rude, are expensive, are not keen on giving out information and prefer to do the work. Although this is straight forward information about the external function so I should be OK. I see it can handle up to 1TB on the external SCSI as non-RAID drives. Will it work with SCSI/IDE adaptors is another thing. I will ask.

 

I'll post the result once I get it. I am currently laid up with extreme sciatica so I'll call DM next week.

 

Thanks for your quick in depth replies. Always a pleasure dealing with friendly professional people. " title="Applause" />

 

All the best.

Barry