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The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s is a hardware-software solution intended for testing and restoring damaged HDDs with SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) or SCSI based interfaces.

The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s coupled with the Data Extractor SAS forms the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s Professional System, which allows you to recover data from SAS or SCSI based HDDs. To repair these HDDs, you only need the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s – for data recovery you need both the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s and the Data Extractor SAS.

SATA or Serial ATA stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and is used with all modern storage drives. Chances are that the hard disk drives and solid state drives connected to your computer are using SATA. Linux 2.6 allowed the users to detect the SCSI ID of a device from its UNIX device path (/dev/hdX) and a patch was published that made identifying the burner device for cdrecord simpler by allowing the user to specify the /dev/hdX device name (or even default to a udev managed link such as /dev/cdrw). Single-Ended Ultra/Wide SCSI (SunSwift PCI) 501-2741 F X1063A: 595-3258: 370-1703 F. Table Legend F = Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) S = Supported, but can. Scsi hp dg146abab4 sasuefi 146 gb hpd5 12 0/4/1/0.6.0 SCSI HP DG072A9BB7 SASUEFI 73. Write command is issued via SCSI Pass-through3. Issue Write command with SLBA = 0, NLB = 1, and data is 'DEADBEEF'. Dataset Management command. Dataset Management command is issued via SCSI Pass-through3 with IOCTLSTORAGEMANAGEDATASETATTRIBUTES 45 (only Deallocate bit is set). LBA region to be deallocated is SLBA = 0 and NLB = 1.

The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s Controller

The new High Performance SAS controller PC-3000 SAS is a PC extension board for the PCI Express x4 bus that takes two adjacent slots which allows for working with four HDDs simultaneously.

Four independent channels provide up to a 6 Gbit/s data transfer rate for each channel according to the SAS-2.0. The data transfer speed depends on the speed of the connected drives.

Working with SATA HDD, SSD

The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s controller allows you to connect SATA HDDs and SSD in read-write modes, test their surface, copy data, and make the image copies at maximum possible speed.

Intelligent Power Supply Unit

A 4-channel Power Supply Unit is used to power the HDDs which are connected to PC-3000 Express. The Power Supply Unit protects the HDDs from overvoltage and overcurrent. In case of emergency, the HDDs will be powered off automatically. Furthermore, each channel has feedback with the PC-3000 software for monitoring the stability of +5V and +12V voltage supply and informing the user about any problems in power circuits.

The intelligent Power Supply Unit of PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s has the following features for advanced HDD diagnostic and troubleshooting:

• The oscilloscope functionality. You can get a graph visually representing the precise information about the current power status in real time.

  This feature allows to perform advanced HDD diagnostic and determine the cause of failure.

  
  
  
  Power voltage oscilloscope screen after HDD start
• The Power Supply Unit is equipped with a sound speaker which signals about the PC power supply unit failure or HDD overcurrent. Triggered protection system turns off the voltage on the corresponding channel.

Resource Management of the PC-3000 SAS board

The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s allows to launch the PC-3000 utility and Data Extractor tasks as separate OS processes. The 'PC-3000 SAS Resource manager' software makes using the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s very easy and effective. It manages port and related process activity, controls the status of the ports, checks process conditions and kills processes if necessary. Once a process is started it can use any of the available ports on the PC-3000 SAS board. For instance, four processes can be used for every port or one process can use four ports etc.

PC-3000 SAS Kit:

• PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s controller - 1 pc
• SAS SFF-8482/SATA/Molex (100cm) cable - 4 pcs
• HDD SCSI (50 cm) power cable - 4 pcs
• PC-3000 SAS software - 1 Flash drive
• User manual - 1 book

Form factor: Embedded PC expansion board which uses two adjacent slots

Interface type: Four-channel PCI Express 2.0 5 Gbit/s

Diagnostic ports (location): 4 - SAS (internal)

Maximum Data Transfer Speed: 600 MB/sec for each port

Power adapter: four-channel adapter with protection, the oscilloscope functionality and the measurement of the voltages and currents values. HDD connectors are internal.

Supported HDD: from 18 GB to 10 TB; 3.5', 2.5'

OS Platforms: Windows 7 (starting from SP1), Windows 8, Windows 10; х86, х64

Recommended PC configuration:
CPU: Intel Core i5
RAM: 8GB
Storage configuration: 1 TB HDD
LCD Monitor: 22', 1920x1080

The main principles of PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s functionality

A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) consists of three main parts: the Hard Drive Assembly, the printed circuit board and the internal software. If one of these parts is damaged, the HDD does not work. The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s System allows you to deeply diagnose HDDs, identify the cause of failure and fix the damaged HDD modules if necessary to get access to the user data.

The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s solution tests, diagnoses, and repairs SAS/SCSI HDDs according to the SAS/SCSI HDD specification in standard (user) and technological (factory) modes. The PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s software consists of a Universal utility aimed at general testing for of SAS/SCSI/SATA HDDs and Specialized utilities to work with SAS/SCSI HDDs in technological mode.

To make initial diagnostics, the PC-3000 universal utility is launched. It diagnoses the HDD in user mode. If there are any HDD malfunctions, a special vendor-specific technological utility (intended for a specific HDD vendor) is used to repair the drive and gain access to user data in technological mode.

All results can be saved into a file or database. All actions are recorded. Testing for read, write, and verification are conducted by HDD performance testing coupled with performance charts.

How to work with SAS HDDs

You can work with SAS HDDs with the PC-3000 SAS controller which has 4 independent SAS ports (ver. 2.0. 6 Gbit/s).

The 4-channel power supply unit allows to manage power of SAS HDDs, protects them from overvoltage and overcurrent, has the oscilloscope functions and measures the supply voltages and currents displaying them in the graph form.

Universal Utility

The following procedures can be performed with the Universal utility:

• General checking of HDD efficiency
• Testing the surface for reading, writing, verification
• Viewing the P-list and G-list tables with hidden defects
• Viewing SMART parameters (Log Sense)
• Viewing and changing the configuration of some HDD parameters
• The Replication function allows both for creating an HDD image (full sector-by-sector copy) and for saving any HDD surface area to file on another HDD and writing saved data to selected media in various combinations between SAS, SCSI and SATA HDD/SSD drives.
• The Sector Editor provides the possibility to view and edit the defined surface areas.

Specialized utilities

IBM, Maxtor-Quantum, Fujitsu, HGST and Seagate Special utilities allow to test SAS HDDs in technological mode, to check and recover the service information.
If any errors are detected, these utilities use additional Vendor code list. This list provides details about the root cause of the found error. In many cases this helps to exactly define all possible ways of repairing the HDD and recovering data from it.
The Specialized utilities are used for testing and recovery of service information, modules, and configuration pages; recalculating (regenerating) of translator; testing of magnetic heads and surfaces with physical parameters; clearing of SMART, reset the counter of power cycles and working hours, HDD firmware uploading.

How to work with SCSI HDDs

You can work with SCSI HDDs with any SCSI controller – Host Bus Adapter (not included into the PC-3000 SAS Kit, and has to be purchased separately). With a SCSI controller – Host Bus Adapter, the functionality is the same as for the PC-3000 for SCSI except for some special functions, which are available only through their own SAS controller. The PC-3000 SAS can work with any SCSI HDDs which have a parallel interface.

In the same way as it is implemented for SAS HDDs, SAS/SCSI HDD testing can be conducted in the Universal utility (SCSI HDD general testing) and in the Specialized utilities (to work with SCSI HDDs in technological mode).

Operating with SCSI HDDs, the PC-3000 SAS controller works as a power supply adapter that allows to control the power supply of up to 4 SCSI HDDs.

How to work with SATA HDDs and SSDs

The PC-3000 SAS works with SATA HDDs and SSDs in read-write modes. It enables testing of the HDD surface, for example to screen or certify. You can test up to 4 SATA drives independently at the same time. Besides you can test other drives connected to the standard motherboard ports. The PC-3000 SAS can be used for replication operations (sector-by-sector copy creation) in different combinations of SAS, SCSI and SATA HDDs/SSDs.

Data transfer is done at the highest speed possible for the HDD and is restricted only by the internal rate of data exchange between the disk surface and the internal disk buffer. The speed of reading and writing of SATA SSD can reach 600 MB/s.

How to recover data with the Data Extractor

To recover data you should the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s Professional System which consists of the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s and the Data Extractor SAS.
The Data Extractor SAS is a professional data recovery software that allows to recover data from SAS and SCSI drives connected to the PC-3000 SAS controller and the PC SCSI controller (which is not included into the PC-3000 SAS Kit).
The Data Extractor SAS can recover data from both physically damaged HDDs and in the case of logical damaged caused by failures or malfunctions of the drive or operating system, incorrect user actions, or the effects of virus programs. The Data Extractor SAS supports the following file systems: FAT, exFAT, NTFS, EXT2/3/4, HFS+, APFS, UFS1/2, XFS, ReiserFS, VMFS, WFS0.x (for video recorders) and virtual machine images.

If you deal with RAID, you may also get the Data Extractor SAS RAID Edition (or upgrade your DE to RAID Edition). The Data Extractor SAS RAID Edition is a professional solution for data recovery from damaged RAID storage based on SAS (Serial Attached SCSI), SCSI, SATA interfaces and supporting the following configurations: Stripe, Mirror, JBOD, 1E Offset, 1E Adjacent, 4, 5, 5E, 5EE, 6, 6 Adaptec, any combined (10, 50, 51, 60...), and table-defined custom levels, as well as WSS (Windows Storage Spaces), ZFS RAID-Z, BtrFS RAID, Apple Fusion Drive (HFS+, APFS).

PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s advantages

• Diagnosis and restoration of SAS HDDs with any capacities on its own SAS controller
• Diagnosis and restoration of SCSI HDDs on an external controllerniversal Utilit
• Operation with SATA HDDs/SSDs in read-write modes both on a SAS controller and on standard motherboard controllers
• The full support of the Data Extractor SAS and Data Extractor SAS RAID Edition to recover data
• Maximum possible speed of working with HDDs/SSDs, restricted only by internal HDDs/SSDs speed
• The PC-3000 SAS software is supported by 32-bit and 64-bit OS Windows Platforms
• Functions for screening, certification and replication (sector-by-sector copy) in various combinations of SAS, SCSI and SATA HDDs/SSDs
• 4-channel power supply adapter with protection from overvoltage and current overloading, the oscilloscope functions and measurement of the supply voltages and currents
• Collaboration of the PC-3000 SAS 6 Gbit/s and PC-3000 Express controllers to physically connect hybrid RAID which consist of SAS/SATA/HDD/SSD (up to 8pcs)

April2003

SCSI isSCSI

How to extendthe life of your HP 3000 with modern, non-HPperipherals

By John Burke

Everheard a question like this? “We have an old HP6000 SCSI SE diskrack. It has been running four 2-gig drives for a long time. One ofthe drives recently failed and we are looking at our options for notonly replacing the lost storage but also increasing our availabledisk space. We are a small company so we are looking for relativelyinexpensive options. Does anyone know if there is a larger drive thatwill fit into that specific rack? Failing that, is there any way wecan get a single 9Gb or 18Gb HP drive to replace the wholerack?”

Thisarticle will address two issues raised by the above question, showwhy they are false, and examine some options that should help you runyour HP 3000 for years to come. The first issue: you need to use onlyHP-branded storage peripherals. The second issue: because you have anold (say 9x7, 9x8 or even 9x9) system you are stuck using both oldtechnology and just plain old peripherals. Both are urban legends andboth are demonstrably false.

There is nothingmagical about HP-branded peripherals

Backin the dark ages when many of us got our first exposure to MPE andthe HP 3000, when HP actually made disk drives, there was a reasonfor purchasing an HP disk drive: “sector atomicity.” 9x7sand earlier HP 3000s had a battery that maintained the state ofmemory for a limited time after loss of power. In my experience, thiswas usually between 30 minutes and an hour. These systems, however,also depended on special firmware in HP-made HP-IB and SCSI drives(sector atomicity) to ensure data integrity during a power loss. Ifpower was restored within the life of the internal battery, thesystem started right back up where it left off, issuing a“Recover from Powerfail” message with no loss of data. Itmade for a great demo.

Theseearlier systems used so much power that the best you could hope forwith a reasonable-sized battery was to keep the memory alive. In ahappy set of coincidences for HP, just as it was contemplatinggetting out of the disk drive manufacturing business, CSY wasdeveloping the 9x8 line of systems that required less power. A smallUPS could keep everything including the disk drives running in thesenewer systems. This seemed superior to just saving the state ofmemory. It also meant CSY could use industry standard disk drives,thus reducing the system cost and helping HP make the decision toexit the disk drive market.

Ah, but you sayall your disk drives have an HP label on them? Don’t be fooledby labels. Someone else, usually Seagate, made them. HP may in somecases add firmware to the drives so they work with certain HPdiagnostics, but other than that, they are plain old industrystandard drives. Which means that if you are willing to forego HPdiagnostics, you can purchase and use plain old industry standarddisk drives and other peripherals with your HP 3000 system. [Forinformation about naming Seagate drives go to www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/howto/interpret_model.html.]

Sowhat, you say? Well, have you tried to buy a 4Gb or 9Gb 50-pin HPbranded disk drive for your 9x7, 9x8 or 9x9 lately? HP does not sellthem anymore. If you can even find one, a 4Gb SE or FWD 50-pin HPbranded disk drive will likely run you at least $500 and a 9Gb SE orFWD 50-pin HP branded disk drive will likely run you at least $800.Oh, and by the way, no one is making new FWD drives anymore of anysize.

Whatabout tape drives? HP DDS2 and earlier drives, except for internalones needed to boot the system, have long since gone off the supportlist. HP DDS3 drives go off the list this year I believe.

Connect justabout anything to anything

SCSI stands forSmall Computer System Interface. It comes in a variety of flavorswith a bewildering set of names attached such as SCSI-2, SCSI-3,SE-SCSI, FW-SCSI, HVD, LVD SCSI, Ultra SCSI, Ultra2 SCSI, Ultra3SCSI, Ultra4 SCSI, Ultra-160, Ultra-320, etc. Pretty intimidatingstuff. [For more than you ever wanted to know about the various SCSIdefinitions see www.paralan.com/glos.htmlor hwww.adaptec.com or, for a general index of sites with SCSIinformation, see www.scsi-planet.com/scsi-definitions.]

Don’tdespair though. Pretty much any kind of SCSI device can be connectedto any other with the appropriate intermediary hardware. Various highquality adaptors and cables can be obtained from Paralan (www.paralan.com) or Granite Digital(www.granitedigital.com).

So,SCSI really is SCSI. It is a well-known, well-understood, evolvingstandard that makes it very easy to integrate and use all sorts ofsimilar devices. MPE and the HP 3000 are rather behind the times,however, in supporting specific SCSI standards. Until recently, onlySE-SCSI (SCSI-2) and FW-SCSI (HVD) were supported. Support for LVDSCSI was added with the A- and N-Class systems and, with MPE/iX 7.5,these same systems now support Fibre Channel (FC). Also, MPE onlysupports a few types of SCSI devices such as disk, certain diskarrays, DDS, DLT and a printer.

Let’s concentrate on the SE-SCSI and FW-SCSI interfaces,both seemingly older than dirt, and disk and tape storage devices.But first, suppose you replace an old drive in your system, whereshould you put it? The 9x7s, 9x8s and 9x9s all have internal drivecages of varying sizes. It is tempting to fill up these bays withnewer drives and, if space is at a critical premium, go ahead.

However, if you can, heed the words of Gavin Scott: “I’drecommend putting the new drives in an external case rather thaninside the system, since that gives you much more flexibility andeliminates any hassles associated with installing the drive insidethe cabinet. It’s the same SCSI interface that you’d beplugging into, so apart from saving the money for the case and cable,there’s no functional difference. With the external case you cancontrol the power of the drive separately, watch the blinking lights,move the drive from system to system (especially useful if you set itup as its own volume set), etc.”

Atsites such as Granite Digital you can buy any number of rack mount,desktop and tower enclosures for disk systems. Here is another urbanlegend; LDEV 1 must be an internal drive. False. Or, the boot tapedevice has to be internal. False. You cannot tell by the path whethera drive is internal or external, and the path is the only thing MPEknows (or cares) about the physical location of the drive.

Okay, thereare some limits

Once you come toterms with the fact that you can use almost any SCSI disk drive inyour HP 3000, dealing with SE SCSI is a piece of cake and a wholeworld of possibilities opens up. With the right cable or adapter (seeParalan or Granite Digital) you are in business. A good Internetsource for disk drives is www.dirtcheapdrives.com.

But just becauseyou can connect the latest LVD drive to your SE-SCSI adaptor, shouldyou? Probably not, because you are still limited by the speed of theSE adaptor and so are just wasting your money. Now that you know youdo not need the specific HP drives you once bought, you can pick upused or surplus drives ridiculously cheap (I once bought a 9Gb SESCSI drive in its own enclosure with new power supply and fan for $54at www.compgeeks.com.)However, you are still dealing with old drives and old technology.Denys Beauchemin discovered that Seagate is now making some newtechnology drives with the old technology 50-pin SE-SCSI interface,the 18Gb model ST318418N and the 36Gb model ST336918N. A quickInternet search showed a price as low as $215 for the 36Gb baredrive. Dirtcheapdrives.com has the 18Gb model in a standaloneenclosure for $239, a perfect solution to replace the 4x2 HP6000 inthe question that started us off.

FW-SCSI is more problematic than SE-SCSI because no one evenmakes FW-SCSI (HVD) disk drives any more and you need more than justa simple cable or adapter to connect newer drives to an HVD adaptor.In fact, from the Paralan site, “HVD SCSI was rendered obsoletein the SPI-3 document of SCSI-3.” So, what is one to do? Mostsystems with FW-SCSI adaptors need them for the increased throughputand capacity they provide over SE-SCSI. Paralan and others makeHVD-LVD converters. The Paralan MH17 is a standalone converter thatallows you to connect a string of LVD disk drives to an HP FW-SCSIadaptor. Pretty cool.

But suppose yourorganization is moving to a Fibre Channel (FC) SAN environment andyou would like to store your HP 3000 data on the SAN. Only thePCI-Bus A- and N-Class systems (under MPE/iX 7.5) support nativeFibre Channel. Denys discovered that Crossroads Systems (www.crossroads.com) now makes astorage router device (ServerAttach) for (ugh) legacy systems thatallows you to connect from one to four FW-SCSI adaptors to up to twoFibre Channel (FC) resources (i.e. SAN). To the HP 3000, each LUNsimply looks like a normal attached disk drive – theServerAttach box, configurable via a web interface, handles all thereally hard stuff. Way cool.

Fortape storage systems, let me quote Denys. “As for tape drives,this is more problematic. First, get off DDS and get to DLT(4000/7000/8000) with DLTIV tapes. Whatever connectivity problemsthere are can be dealt with just like the disk drives. If you have aPCI machine, LTO or SuperDLT is the way of the future and they bothrequire LVD connections. If you have a non-PCI machine, anythingfaster that a DLT8000 is wasted anyway because of thearchitecture.”

Notethat while, as Denys says, LTO and SuperDLT are the “way of thefuture,” HP has not committed to supporting either on the HP3000. SuperDLT should probably work on A- and N-Class systems usingthe existing DLT driver; however, I do not know anyone who has tried.LTO drives will require a new driver for the HP 3000, so we shouldprobably not hold our breath on that one.

Aquick word about configuring your new storage peripherals: Do not getconfused by the seemingly endless list of peripherals inIODFAULT.PUB.SYS. And, do not worry if your particular disk or tapedrive is not listed in IODFAULT.PUB.SYS. Part of the SCSI standardallows for the interrogation of the device for such things as ID,size, etc. DSTAT ALL shows the disk ID returned by the drive, notwhat you entered in SYSGEN. When configuring in a new drive(s), justuse an ID that is close. In fact, there is really no need for anymore than two entries for disk drives in IODFAULT, one for SE drivesand one for HVD drives so as to automatically configure in thecorrect driver. The same is true for tape drives.

Summary

Ifyou plan to homestead, even think you might, or think there is eventhe slightest possibility you will still be using your HP 3000 forsome years to come, you need to start thinking about your storageperipherals. Now. Disk drives and tape drives are the devices mostlikely to fail in your HP 3000 system. The good news is that you donot need to be stuck using old technology, nor are you limited to HPonly peripherals. Here is a summary of what the experts I’vequoted recommend you do.

Legend Scsi & Raid Devices Driver Download Windows 7

Ifyou can, trade in your older machines for the A-Class or N-Classmodels. Yes, the A-Class and some N-Class systems suffer from CPUthrottling. (HP’s term. Some outside HP prefer CPU crippling.)However, even with the CPU throttling, most users will seesignificant improvement simply by moving to the A-Class or N-Class.[In the recent System Improvement Ballot (SIB), removing CPUthrottling was far and away the number one item in the voting.However, HP has given no indication it will do anything about this,so it would be unwise to purchase a low-end A- or N-Class system inthe hopes that you will get a “free” performance boostsometime in the future.] Both the A-Class and N-Class systems use thePCI bus. PCI cards are available for the A- and N-Class for SE-SCSI,FW-SCSI and Ultra-3 SCSI (LVD). You can slap in any drivemanufactured today; by anybody. Furthermore, with MPE/iX 7.5, PCIfiber channel adaptors are also supported, further expanding yourchoices. An A- or N-Class system bought today should be going strong10 years from now.

Iffor whatever reason you are going to homestead on the older systemsor expect to use the older systems for a number of years to come, youhave several options for storage solutions. For your SE-SCSIadaptors, you can use the new technology, old interface 18Gb and 36GbSeagate drives. For your FW-SCSI (HVD) adaptors, since no one makesHVD drives anymore, you have to use a conversion solution. [You couldof course replace your FW-SCSI adaptors with SE-SCSI adaptors, butthis would reduce capacity and throughput.] One possibility is to usean LVD-HVD converter and hang a string of new LVD drives off each ofyour FW-SCSI adaptors. The other possibility is the CrossroadsSystems router that allows you to connect from one to four FW-SCSIadaptors to up to two Fibre Channel (FC) resources (i.e. SAN). In allcases, get rid of those dusty old HP 6000 enclosures, disasters justwaiting to happen.

Asfor tape drives, forget DDS and use DLT (4000/7000/8000) with DLTIVtapes. Whatever connectivity problems there are can be dealt withjust like the disk drives. If you have a PCI machine, LTO or SuperDLTis the way of the future and they both use LVD connections, thoughwhether HP will support either for the HP 3000 remains an openquestion.

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Thebottom line is you have numerous options to satisfy your HP 3000storage needs, both now and into the future.

Special thanks go to Denys Beauchemin who contributedsignificant material to this article. Also contributing were StanSieler, Steve Dirickson, Wirt Atmar and Gavin Scott.

JohnBurke is the founder of Burke Consulting and Technology Solutions(www.burke-consulting.com), which specializes in system management,consulting and outsourcing. He has over 25 years experience insystems, operations and development, is co-chair of SIGMPE, and hasbeen writing regularly about HP e3000 issues for over 10 years. Youcan reach him at john@burke-consulting.com

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