Question

Dell Dimension 9150 - Lost RAID/SATA config manager (no Ctrl+i at bootup)

Asked by: MereDevelopment

Hi,

I've just hastily tried to do a rebuild on a colleagues Dimension 9150 after a HD failure and probably messed it up by being too quick, too cocky and not planning!

The original factory supplied machine had 2 x SATA drives in RAID 0 (stupid stupid stupid stupid dell I hate you, who the hell sells RAID 0 to clueless users that think they have 'proper' RAID so they must be safe). There's some sort of onboard Intel Matrix raid/sata driver and 4 sata slots.

After I was sure the drive was dead (it was member 0, on SATA_0 port) I:
- rebooted and hit CTRL+I during boot-up to get to the Matrix manager thing and deleted the RAID array.
- I then powered off & removed the dodgy drive.
- moved the good drive from SATA_2 to SATA_0 port.
- then restarted, entered BIOS and switched the drive off, save and reboot.

Now After I get the F2 for Setup, F12 for utilities options, it goes straight to "Error Loading Operating System"... my CTRL+I option is missing. Surely it's a second BIOS type thing that should show BEFORE the system tries to look for an boot devices?

Any ideas?

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Asked On
2009-10-05 at 02:50:11ID24784928
Topics

Personal Computers

,

Computer Hard Drives

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-10-05 at 03:15:57ID: 25493807

Seemingly you need to turn of RAID in BIOS (switch it from RAID to enhanced IDE or SATA). Then save changes and restart. As far as I understood you are not going to have RAID anymore, am I right?

 

by: MereDevelopmentPosted on 2009-10-05 at 03:36:10ID: 25493904

Mmm.. Yea I should have been clearer but was trying to fire off an question asap. "More haste less speed!"

I've now put the dead drive back and what I'd like to do is re-set-up the drives with RAID 1, but degraded with one drive missing and then when it turns up tomorrow/next day, add it into the array.

The dead drive is still reporting it-self correctly so the BIOS sees it ok, and I would expect to be able to create an array with it. My mistake was to reboot AFTER removing the array and before creating a RAID 1 array in the Intel Manager thing.

So what this question has really turned into is: Where has CTRL+I gone at boot-up, and how can I get it back?

Thanks..

 

by: noxchoPosted on 2009-10-05 at 03:47:15ID: 25493956

Enter BIOS - find HDD configuration - On chip SATA or Onboard controller  (in my BIOS it is Integrated Peripherals) there set as RAID.
Sure your BIOS could be different but in any case you need to find the way to enable RAID so to get the wanted Ctrl + option.
Mine shows for example Native IDE, AHCI and RAID. When I set it as RAID in BIOS then I get the enter RAID config util CTRL + message.

 

by: MereDevelopmentPosted on 2009-10-05 at 04:14:44ID: 31637113

Ah yes, I had tried various options in the drive settings, and it turned out to be a matter of getting the correct combination of drives and settings.
Next time I must label drives before I remove them and take a note of bios settings before making any changes. Thanks!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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