NUMBER  : A3TH070390U74
            SUBJECT  : Problem with Some Large SCSI Drives 
               DATE  : 7/11/90
         OS VERSION  : All
           REVISION  :
      SHELL VERSION  :

            PROBLEM  : A customer has an Adaptec 1542 controller with a CDC 630MB 
drive and CDC 650MB drive, using the Adaptec VADD that was tested and approved 
by Novell.  When the drive gets 5MB or less space free, they get an error 
"Warning: Fatal dir error on volume XXX FAT sector 1".  They have to reboot the 
file server before anyone can login.
 
           SOLUTION  : Some of the large SCSI drives like the CDC drives vary 
in the amount of cylinders and heads that are actually on the drive.  
Therefore, the drive type may not match correctly.  When NetWare gets out to 
the end of the drive it cannot access the sectors that, in actuality, are not 
there even though they were defined in the drive setup by the VADD.  This 
problem occurs most often when the customer mixes and matches controllers with 
drives.  When buying a controller and drive from the same manufacturer these
incompatibilities are usually fixed.
 
There are two solutions to try.  1) Get the correct drive type information from
the drive manufacturer and install it.  2) Backup the drive, re-intialize it,
and define a smaller NetWare partition.  That way, NetWare will not attempt to 
access the drive beyond the maximum limit.

YOUR NAME AND DEPT.  : Tim Hofheins - ATS

(Check all that apply)

  (X)    This information was verified verbally.

  (X)    This information was verified by Engineering.