Re: BCC Tech IBM Ultrastar 6818 disks for the AS/400

Dan,
I just installed 4 of them in my 170, full replacement.

Since I have a good bit of experience with DR, and have some good friends in
the AS400 hardware support field, I bypassed the CE coming out and
installing the drives and did it myself.  I had some initial problems,
probably my fault, since I did not read the "directions to IBM CE", which
stated "Don't copy (pump) drive to drive".  Well....I did just that and had
problems, I removed and added down to drive 2, "removed" drive 2,  then
tried to "pump" drive 1 to 2, and that turned out to be a really bad idea.
It seemed to work, but a day later some really weird things were happening
on the dasd controller.  I just didn't want to trust my backup and thought I
could get by without a full reload.  Original bad idea.

Rather than screw around with it, their tech offered to simply replace all
four, so I popped my old drives back in and re-installed from a Save-21 the
following week.

Since then, I had one drive have a problem.  They overnighted a replacement
and I've had no more problems.

They do seem to work faster than my old drives and everything is going fine.
I'm still curious to know when was the last time IBM actually ptf'd
microcode to the drives.

A week or so ago, Larry posted the questions we all have concerning non-IBM
drives.  Since these are important questions, I posed them to BCC and am
currently waiting for a response.

My advice:
1. Set up Raid immediately, if you don't have it already.  The main reason I
went to 17G drives was to have space for Raid.
2. don't do anything without a Save-21, I'd have two or at least two
"generations"
3. if you're replacing all, label them, remove all of them and do a full
reload from tape.  That way, you can just pop them back in and you're back
where you were, at least.  Add/remove one at a time works just fine.
4. If you're changing the load source drive, definitely do a reload from
tape.

Following the "advice" above, I'd use them at a client's site.  But, it will
be interesting to see what BCC's response to the questions are...

AS/Resources, Inc.
William A.(Tony) Corbett
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 Developer
http://www.asresources.com
corbett@asresources.com
404-784-4737


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