Fix was found here:
http://www.groovytunes.nl/joep/?p=162

http://tinyurl.com/B-C-HPURL
Use the USB Key Version to update – apparently can’t format via Win7 but worked fine from 2003 server / xp.

basically had to update the BMC Firmware up to 3.11 to resolve fan issue after Bios Update…

All set now and I think I can hear again!

http://aqstech.com/aqslive/?p=1565

Quoted Rate was $99 Plus Shipping…

I chose to pull the board and send it alone full CPU / RAM and everything still onboard, just incase they had power to fire it up.

They didn’t have the power to fire it up but they fixed it and its now running…

installed a removable bios on the board… quickly from California to NY and back… ~ 2 weeks and ground shipping is all I used…

Shipping ~$25 + $15 Charge for Fedex Pickup in western NY…

Well worth the stress relief…

Wish I had read your post earlier… I know have an expensive metal brick… with 16tb…

There are a few options for repairs…
http://www.aqstech.com/hpbios20.htm
$99 for the repair…
Shipping is the only headache…

1.) Those after-market drive trays can be of very questionable quality. Some of ours did not have all the retainer pins holding the front of the tray to the back securely “fastened” (melted) – meaning if you try to pull the handle to remove the drive from the cage, the handle & the rest of the face will break off. As long as you catch it up front, you can use a soldering iron to melt the pins. Please just remember to clean the iron’s tip afterward!

Your mileage may vary depending on the drive itself. We have tried WD Caviar Black drives and Hitachi, and no matter what we do – some of the bays have flickering amber or blue LEDs. The array says the drives are fine, but we get all this phantom LED activity.

If you are buying new you’ll likely want to not get the old G5 but move to the DL180 G6 which has the P410 instead of the P400 anyway. If only the DL185 G7 was to be produced – now that would be one amazing machine.

However, the trays are not designed to constantly go in and out. Nor is the chassis. It’s meant for occasional swaps, not regular use. I would not recommend using internal hot swap bays for that type of drive rotation. Look at a dedicated external drive bay that is designed specifically for that purpose and keep the internal drive bays for perm drives.

I’d like to install 12 drives and be able to rotate the drives pretty much like tapes – do you think that would be possible?

I can appreciate the ‘supposed’ reliability gained by the quality of the HP Hard Drives however I can NOT justify the price being nearly 3 times as much to get it.

Please remember when you are building RAID solutions, the idea is to ALLOW for failure with an easy remedy.

Anyone got a fix, workaround, patch for dealing with HP Management and Hard Drive monitoring, high fan speed?

Thanks!

So what happens to SAM-SD when the DL185 G5 is no longer available? 🙂
Will there be specs for a SAM-SD 2?

SSD with work fine with these brackets. SSD appears as a SAS or SATA drive so no concerns with visibility to the controller. There is no special SSD controller.

Does anybody try to put cheap SSD disks to these brackets? Are they visible for controller?

Thank you for information.

Smart Array are considered the best RAID controllers that money can buy. There is no limitation for third party drives, you can use any drive that you want. No reason for the remotest concern there. There is no benefit to using HP-branded drives from a controller perspective. You can mix and match all you want.

are you saying you had no trouble with the P400 controller and 1.5TB barracuda drives? Are you using array configuration utility for managing all this?

I’m interested to put this controller in my workstation but have never seen how the smart arrays handle 3rd party hard drives…

What Seagate hard drive model are you using for your configuration? Will it support the seagate 1.5 tb barracuda 7200.99 hard drives?