SCSI drive no longer announce themselves

[spyro0]

My 2 internal SCSI disks
a Seagate ST39103LWV 8 Gig -Windows 2000 boot and
a Fujitsu M2954QAU 4 Gig
no longer announce themselves in response to a probe-SCSI from the controller.
The system is a dual Pentuim II Intel PR440Fx motherboard from 1998. The Fujitsu was the first system drive, replaced by the Seagate in 2000, when the machine was upgraded to W2000.
A Maxtor Ultra IDE controller and a WesterDigital WD1200JB 120Gig drive were installed for the transition to XP.
I am posting this message using this machine on XP.
After XP had installed we noticed that the SCSI disks were no longer there.

The only event which might be related is the removal of the SCSI cable from the motherboard prior to the install. The 68 pin D connectors fit very tightly and there was much recoil. I did not see damaged pins on the cable, under magnifying binoculars. I did not see any visible damage on the motherboard.

The drives spin up and light up under a probe SCSI. However the controller doesn't know it.

The SCSI bus hangs when I strap the address to match that of an external Jaz drive.

The jaz drive is accesable by XP, you can walk through the file tree.

I have an add in SCSI controllr, an AC2930CU single ended SCSII2 controller. I purchased Belkin 68 Pin D Female to
50 Pin square Female header adapters.
This controller did not see either drive, but did see an
old 1/2Gig Seagate ST3600N drive I had on the shelf.

I was able to access the 3600 and started a disk verify.
It complained on a few spots that it was not able to re-map.
That may be a subject for another posting.

I have dowloaded the manuals of both the Seagate and the Fujitsu and reviewd the jumpers. They make sense to me.
Needless to say they were not changed during the install.

While examining the drives I noticed that the only addressing jumper in use (drives were 0 and 1) was very loose and ready to fall off. I don't see this as a problem, but did not want to omit any details.

Retrieving my data is VERY important to me. My saved mail for several years, contacts etc are there. Neverthelelss, aside from the data, I am dying to know what the hell happened !

I have spoken to Ontrack Data Recovery. I spoke to a sales person who quoted me $400 to $1,500 per drive. They have a clean room and are used to dissabling HDAs and recovering from head crashes. I don't need theat level of service.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this probelm, or if you could direct me to a drive repair place say in to $100 per unit range.

Thanks

 

[edfair]

And when single drives are installed into the system?
It is possible for a single drive to have a failure that affects the entire chain, so troubleshooting starts with single drives.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[spyro0]

Ed,

Thanks for writing.
I have tried many permutations in my troubleshooting.
Here are some:

Seagate 8Gig Internal -Only drive on bus ==> No annoucement
Fujitsu 4Gig Internal -Only drive on bus ==>No annoucement

Either Seagate or Fujitsu as the only internal drive on
the bus and a 2Gig jaz external.
Result: The internal drive is not recognized,
but the jazz is and is accessed fine by the os.

I don't rember if it was the Fuitsu or the
Seagate, but I inadvertantly set it to the same id
as the jazz (4). As you would expect, the buss hung on
the probe-scsi.

I just completed the following test:
Fujitsu at one end of the internal cable set to provide
16 bit termination and ided as 0. Motherboard set for no termination. The other end of the cable goes to a smart
termination card which know if a connector is plugged in.
Connector in, no termination on card, connector out, card
provides termination on that end. Nothing connected to the
card, no external devices.

The Fujitsu did not announce. It was not seen on the bus.
As a matter of fact it is there right now.

If you would outline a series of tests, I would be happy
to try them and report. You can also e-mail me directly.

Thanks,

Spyro

expect.

 

[edfair]

If a single drive fails to ID in the setup you have described it generally indicates that the drive board has failed. Since both fail the same way I suspect that one took the other out. And anything you put in the chain is at risk of the same problem.

It has been a long time, and on another operating system, since I manipulated the SCSI registers to get the info I needed from a drive so I can't give you any advice on how to do it with MS product. One day I'll probably have to learn.

You might try a "SCSI drive" search on the web to find duplicate drives, or even ebay, to locate duplicate drives and try a board swap.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.