FTADMIN Incorrectly Shows Phantom Drives or Problems (96737)

SUMMARY

At times FTADMIN will incorrectly show phantom drives and/or phantom errors. These problems, though surprising, are easily correctable.

PROBLEM ID: BUG# 406

SYMPTOMS

At times FTADMIN will report drives as being cracked, displaying a question mark (?) where the drive letter should be. Viewing information about the drive will show a code ???, critical level, a disk block with a ridiculous number (4291035135, 4294967295 and 4294905600 have been seen, even if the block size was 512 bytes [these figures represent a location of just under 2 terabytes]) and a drive type unknown. This can occur on "raw" drives (not partitioned) or it can be a truly "phantom" (non- existent) drive. When <Correct all errors on drive> is selected a Net 2533 will be produced. Choosing OK at this point will cause the cracked drive to go away.

CAUSE

There are at least two known ways to produce this problem. The first is to go into FDISKPM, create a partition on a "raw" drive, and exit the program without saving the changes. Making a change and exiting FTSETUP without saving the changes will produce the same result. This problem appears to persist through system shutdowns and reboots, but not through a power down and reboot. The other known way to produce this problem is to attempt to run the Verify option of FTADMIN (locally) and WFTADMIN (remotely) at the same time (see related article on concurrency).

RESOLUTION

As mentioned earlier, choosing OK after receiving the Net 2533 message will cause the cracked drive to go away.

Attempting to correct the phantom drive by selecting <Correct> then <All errors on all drives> may not work. The phantom drive itself may have to be selected and then use <Correct>, <All errors on selected drive>.