Poweredge 2600 - Perc 4Di - raid cache battery type

Question

Hi all,   I'm almost completely happy.:smileymad: In Europe (you know, just from Africa towards the north pole) you cannot buy a replacement for that battery pack.   But, no problem! You can however buy a whole perc 4di kit. Only, it is a little more expensive.   I'm near the 3000 cycle count (expected 'standard' life of the pack) I can: 1. reset the cycle count and pray 2. buy four AAA batteries and build my own replacement pack 3. disable write cache (I'll loose performance, but that server is no longer the 'primary' one for any application)   Any advice (or suggestion)? Must the batteries be Li-Ion, or Ni-Mh?   TIA Rodeca

pcmeiners · Answer

You can NOT use anything but lithium ion cells for replacements unless you can risk fire, exploding batteries etc. ( the charging system is different from Ni-Cad batteries used in older raids )There is nothing special about the batteries (industrial standard Li ion ), you can get  the pak rebuilt from battery companies on the web, but it must include any thermistors or fuses within the pak, and have the same voltage output as the original. Have to admit, raid battery replacement has a huge profit margin.... what a ripoff  for $10 worth of battery cells.

Rodeca · Answer

pcmeiners wrote:

Have to admit, raid battery replacement has a huge profit margin.... what a ripoff for $10 worth of battery cells.

Yes: ebay.com $60 (+$30 shipping to europe). ebay.co.uk L20 ($40)... and so on:smileysad:

What about 1 (reset) or 3 (disable)? For I do know you do know a lot about raids :smileywink:

Thank you very much.

Rodeca

pcmeiners · Answer

Was going on the retail pricing. Personally, I almost have a capacitor discharge welder completed for my use to rebuild battery paks in general, as I refuse to pay hundreds of dollars for a pak worth $20.00. Where they get you with Lithium batteries..the charging system is much more complicated than the common 'float charging' as used with Ni-Cad batteries. As note regular household AAAs are out, as the lithium charger will definitely over charge them... as in explode or leak.    If you can get a decent price on Ebay, I would go for it, if you figure the batteries have not had major use. Technically, batteries should last >5 years in use. I have often purchase complete raid cards off Ebay, so far no problems.   With the newest raid adapters (lsi based), reseting does nothing to the batteries expected life, disabling it or removing the battery forces the controller to turn off the cache. Past adapters allowed you to have no battery and still turn on 'write back', so if you had a decent UPS unit, you were fairly safe.

Rodeca · Answer

pcmeiners wrote:

Technically, batteries should last >5 years in use.

At last, I've selected: "Reset & pray":

My battery pack only has 3 years; reason for reseting is to avoid the alarm (and perhaps failure to boot) when it reach 1100 max recharges.

Thank you again

Rodeca

P.S. Don't worry: I'll not blaim you if it fails before 5 years :smileywink:

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Poweredge 2600 - Perc 4Di - raid cache battery type

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