im a newbie running suse 9.2... ok i have adaptec 2940uw using scsi hitachi dkr1c-j72sc i pulled from a trashed (but working at the time hitachi 7700) disk array .i know the hard drive work but they came out of a proprietary system and the firmware is proprietary only for that array .
i bought 1 other working dkr1c-j72sc from ebay tested and working on my system . is there away i can extract the firmware and then flash it to the other drives ?? is there someway i can utilize them or are the junk .....?

I doubt the firmware is proprietary. More likely the drive is not correctly formatted to be recognized by an x86 system. I have encountered this more than once.

The solution is to use the Adaptec controller to low-level format the drive. When you are booting the system, as the Adaptec is starting hit ctrl-a and this will take you into the adaptec's firmware-based toolset. One of your options is to low-level format the drive.

is there a way the adaptec contoller 0 the drive ???or is there a 3rd party software to 0 the drive????

The adaptec controller will do it. The utility is in the firmware and is accessed by hitting ctrl-a when the adaptec controller is starting up.

i tried the low level format same thing happens everytime it will 3/4 format finish and ill get a message of the sense key 03h error ..... it has something to do with blocking addressing i think zeroing drive would help but i havr nothing that will do it

Sense key error means that the drive media cannot be read for some reason. This has to be a hardware problem, if the message is coming out of the Adaptec controller.

In addition to the sense key error, there should have been an "additional sense code" and an "additional sense code qualifier" reported. The format should look something like this:

sense key error = 03h, Asc = 18h, Ascq = 02h.

Probably the drive is toast, but reporting those other codes will confirm that.

called them i used a tester software states that it fine ...but they also told me that that the block addressing is different and should only be used in that array ......is it posible to find a pci scsi controller or some way to zero the block addressing ...im willing to give one away for testing if needed

A low level format using the utility in the adaptec controller will do this.

One thing to consider, that 2940uw is considered junk now, it only supports single ended scsi, not lvd. So a mismatch of cabling (which btw has the exact same connector as U320) could cause you some problems. I know controllers are expensive and you're trying to do it on the cheap, but that one is not the best choice for reliability... they don't make drives for that bus anymore, even though some drives have backward compatability built in - I've had problems with those cards and newer drives.

what would u recomment then? i dont wanna buy another scsi card and it not work ....i dont mind shipping 1 for testing (hell i have 24) that i can not seem to use they all pretty much do the same thing they start the format and freeze

The adaptec 19160 is a good low cost card for LVD drives, if you are using older UW drives then the 2940uw is ok to keep using but I doubt your drives are that old.
So what would I do, I would buy a new card and new scsi drive. The problem you're describing is either a bad card, cable, or drive.

With that card/drive combination, you'd get better performance with a cheap modern IDE drive.

Edit: The last time I did a low-level format it took several hours... and appeared to freeze, but eventually finished just fine.

Duh!

I didn't think about that, but you are absolutely right. I have a 2940UW still in service in an 8 year old box, and I haven't serviced those HDs in probably 4 years.

That most certainly could cause a problem; you can't effectively use a differential drive on a single ended controller, unless the drive will explicitly support it. Some do, but only at very reduced transfer speeds and with appropriate termination.

A 29160 will put things right. That is a nice controller.

HI; My name is Mark. I recently joined the forum. I work for a college electronic engineering department. I recently aquired 128 Hitachi DKR1c-J72SC SCSI drives as a donation out of a large server array.
I would like to use them in my computer Lab class for students to get hands on experience with SCSI devices. I took one drive and connected an adaptec 2940UW that I use at home to that drive and found the scsi controller was too old and did not suport the drive fully to low level format it for use on a Pentium 4 system. The drive was found by the controller but you couldn't prepare it for use by low level formatting with this older controller.
I'm buying some Adaptec 2940U2W SCSI controllers that are according the description able to run the Ultra 160M/LVD/SE drives like this drive. I'd like to find out if anyone has data sheets about the jumpers for assigning ID numbers and correct jumper selection of any operating options that are on that drive.

Thanks to ANYONE for technical info on setting up this drive jumper configuration.

Mark