Question on dual hard drive machines

[Vulkor]

Never even heard of a 4hd assembly. Of course I don't know code names like Venus either.

[Shadow1]

I have replaced countless hard drives, and only ordered them from Ricoh once. (and nearly got shot when my Mgr saw the pricetag.) Ricoh wants the drives replaced in pairs so they can be initialized as a raid0 - not sure why the machine is not smart enough to reinitialize the array when just one drive is replaced, but that's what the engineers are telling us.

Just put 2 new matched drives in the machine and keep the good one for use somewhere else in a single drive machine. If you have a Linux computer handy you can attach that drive temporarily and use dd to overwrite the drive with 00h and reuse it anywhere. I'm sure there is a utility for winderz, but I haven't hunted one down yet.

[Star]

Thanks for all the info/input folks!

Much appreciated!

Star

[Vulkor]

Agreed, this is really helpful info!

[ferastec]

He guys

My name is feras the service manager of Getetner dubai.
This is my first time to use this site, I think it is really helpful.

We have faced this problem before, the solution for it to get hard drive from the local market and then make an image from working hard drive.
75% it will work.
But before changing the hard drive one solution can work:
Switch off the machine, dis connect the upper hard drive(power and data), switch on the machine, inter SP mode and then execute the formats one by one.
After that switch off the machine, connect the upper hard drive and disconnect the lower one and do the same.(format one by one)
Connect the lower hard drive and then switch on the machine.

The chance is 40% that the machin can work fine.

Regards

[ferastec]

He guys

My name is feras the service manager of Getetner dubai.
This is my first time to use this site, I think it is really helpful.

We have faced this problem before, the solution for it to get hard drive from the local market and then make an image from working hard drive.
75% it will work.
But before changing the hard drive one solution can work:
Switch off the machine, dis connect the upper hard drive(power and data), switch on the machine, inter SP mode and then execute the formats one by one.
After that switch off the machine, connect the upper hard drive and disconnect the lower one and do the same.(format one by one)
Connect the lower hard drive and then switch on the machine.

The chance is 40% that the machin can work fine.

Regards

[Jomama46]

Interesting, that would mean that the machine is capable of establishing its own RAID Array. Which models have you tried this on?

[ferastec]

MPC4500, MPC3500

as i said, 40 % is the chance only

[iMind]

[imaginemoko]

some defective HDD can be re-use after low level formatting... i have try in martini and bellini... local(any brand as pair) HDD same capacity can also use depends on its jumper...(its obvious)

[Jomama46]

You can work in Dubai, but can you afford to Live in Dubai.

[iMind]

(its obvious) as a slave, LOL

[ferastec]

(its obvious) as a slave, LOL

life is manageable here, can get good experience, and it is challenge too.

[mikadonovan]

On machines with dual hard drives (let's say the MPC4500 for example), Ricoh wants to sell the hard drives as a single unit--> B2235090 Hard Drive Unit. They want an arm and a leg for this unit (2 common hard drives mounted in the bracket) for the OUTRAGIOUS COST OF 670.07!!!

I have been lucky enough not to have to change any drives in these machines yet. So my question is: When the time comes, is there any reason why I couldn't just aquire 2 like hard drives at the same capacity or a little larger, and use them?

I appreciate any opinions from you Ricoh Masters out there who have experience with this?

Thank you very much in advance!!

Star

Check this site out. They have these HDD assemblies at a semi-decent price.

memoryexpertsinc.com

[Star]

Hey, thanks for the heads up! I never thought about Memory Experts. I buy memory from them quite often. In fact they make the memory (Can Ram) for many machine manufacturers. I'll have to give them a call.