bassque
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Netserver won't boot with mylex raid controller bios enabled?
I have an HP Netserver LX Pro. I recently installed a Mylex DAC960PDU Single channel raid controller in it along with 12-36GB IBM 36D drives.
Everything was fine until I created the raids. I created 2 raid 5 arrays, the first being a 40GB raid 5 and the Second being a 300GB raid 5.
After the Raids were created the system will not boot at all. There is no OS on the machine at this point. But reguardless it will not boot any bootable cd's (it regognizes the bootable cd) nor will it boot off a floppy disk.
All was well before I made the raids and all works well if I disable the bios on the raid controller.
Is if possible to boot off the 40GB partition or isn't it?
Is this causing the problem?
If so how can I fix it?
Any info is greatly appreciated, and if I have not provided enough info please let me know!
thanks!
Everything was fine until I created the raids. I created 2 raid 5 arrays, the first being a 40GB raid 5 and the Second being a 300GB raid 5.
After the Raids were created the system will not boot at all. There is no OS on the machine at this point. But reguardless it will not boot any bootable cd's (it regognizes the bootable cd) nor will it boot off a floppy disk.
All was well before I made the raids and all works well if I disable the bios on the raid controller.
Is if possible to boot off the 40GB partition or isn't it?
Is this causing the problem?
If so how can I fix it?
Any info is greatly appreciated, and if I have not provided enough info please let me know!
thanks!
"Is if possible to boot off the 40GB partition or isn't it?"
Depends on your operating system. WinNT = no. Win2K or *nix = yes
How did you install 12 drives on a single channel SCSI controller? You'd need dual channel to handle that many. SCSI normally handles 8 devices per channel. Perhaps this same term is being used in some RAID fashion of which I'm not aware. Does it mean that you can only have one array defined? That would explain why defining two arrays crashes the works.
LX Pro? I think that's the 2 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet Pentium Pro model, isn't it? Used to work at a place that had one. What a beast of a case, but it really hummed along after I upgraded it to 4 CPUs, three NICs, and 2GB ram... even with Win2K Advanced Server that the boss insisted I install on it...
What prompted the new RAID card, the motherboard's built in RAID wasn't enough or what?
regards,
magarity
Depends on your operating system. WinNT = no. Win2K or *nix = yes
How did you install 12 drives on a single channel SCSI controller? You'd need dual channel to handle that many. SCSI normally handles 8 devices per channel. Perhaps this same term is being used in some RAID fashion of which I'm not aware. Does it mean that you can only have one array defined? That would explain why defining two arrays crashes the works.
LX Pro? I think that's the 2 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet Pentium Pro model, isn't it? Used to work at a place that had one. What a beast of a case, but it really hummed along after I upgraded it to 4 CPUs, three NICs, and 2GB ram... even with Win2K Advanced Server that the boss insisted I install on it...
What prompted the new RAID card, the motherboard's built in RAID wasn't enough or what?
regards,
magarity
ASKER
How did you install 12 drives on a single channel SCSI controller?
Its a raid controller and it supports 15 drives per channel as do most.
LX Pro? I think that's the 2 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet Pentium Pro model, isn't it?
Yes, I bought it from a guy I know for a good price. From there I added the 2nd processor card and its now quad ppro200's w/ 512k each.
I have an adaptec quad port NIC in it.
I overcame this boot problem. It seems that the scsi bios and the raid bois both had bootable cdrom enabled which was conflicting. I disabled it on 1 and all was well.
But now I am faced with yet another problem!!
I installed Win2k Pro server on the 40gig raid 5. When the install completed and it tried to access the partition which I formatted in ntfs it said "A disk read error has occured"
it stops here
anyone have any ideas?
I thought it might be related the the mbr on the raid.
thanks
Its a raid controller and it supports 15 drives per channel as do most.
LX Pro? I think that's the 2 feet by 3 feet by 4 feet Pentium Pro model, isn't it?
Yes, I bought it from a guy I know for a good price. From there I added the 2nd processor card and its now quad ppro200's w/ 512k each.
I have an adaptec quad port NIC in it.
I overcame this boot problem. It seems that the scsi bios and the raid bois both had bootable cdrom enabled which was conflicting. I disabled it on 1 and all was well.
But now I am faced with yet another problem!!
I installed Win2k Pro server on the 40gig raid 5. When the install completed and it tried to access the partition which I formatted in ntfs it said "A disk read error has occured"
it stops here
anyone have any ideas?
I thought it might be related the the mbr on the raid.
thanks
Have you applied SP2 ??
Did you update all the drivers and BIOS's as I suggested ??
They may not all be win2k compliant out of the box.
I hope this helps!
Did you update all the drivers and BIOS's as I suggested ??
They may not all be win2k compliant out of the box.
I hope this helps!
ASKER
Can't apply SP2 because I can't boot the OS.
I will take action as far as upgrading bios and see what happens.
I'll keep you posted.
I will take action as far as upgrading bios and see what happens.
I'll keep you posted.
Upgrade the BIOS and any other Dell stuff, and also the RAID firmware if possible !!
Is it safe assume that during the initial installation when it said 'Press F6 to install third party RAID drivers' you did so and then put in the driver disk for the RAID adapter when prompted? Otherwise you'll get what looks like a successful installation but unable to access the disk. There are probably other causes, but this is one.
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ASKER
Thats a great article. Unfortunatly it varies a bit fron the situation I'm in. I assume the hpdant.sys drives is only for hp raid controllers? This it not an hp controller.
From the looks of it, its having trouble accessing the ntfs partition to bot the OS. Is this because 2000 users a newer version of ntfs that the controller does not understand?
And if I am correct windows 2000 doesn't have the same limitation of 1024 cylanders as NT does. I think I'm going to try to reinstall now and bring the partition size down to 8gig and see if thats the answer.
Yes I did press F6 and install the manufacturers drivers for the raid card prior to installing 2k.
If this doesn't work I'm upgrading all bios.
please keep bringing on the ideas ;-)
thanks
From the looks of it, its having trouble accessing the ntfs partition to bot the OS. Is this because 2000 users a newer version of ntfs that the controller does not understand?
And if I am correct windows 2000 doesn't have the same limitation of 1024 cylanders as NT does. I think I'm going to try to reinstall now and bring the partition size down to 8gig and see if thats the answer.
Yes I did press F6 and install the manufacturers drivers for the raid card prior to installing 2k.
If this doesn't work I'm upgrading all bios.
please keep bringing on the ideas ;-)
thanks
ASKER
Thats a great article. Unfortunatly it varies a bit fron the situation I'm in. I assume the hpdant.sys drives is only for hp raid controllers? This it not an hp controller.
From the looks of it, its having trouble accessing the ntfs partition to bot the OS. Is this because 2000 users a newer version of ntfs that the controller does not understand?
And if I am correct windows 2000 doesn't have the same limitation of 1024 cylanders as NT does. I think I'm going to try to reinstall now and bring the partition size down to 8gig and see if thats the answer.
Yes I did press F6 and install the manufacturers drivers for the raid card prior to installing 2k.
If this doesn't work I'm upgrading all bios.
please keep bringing on the ideas ;-)
thanks
From the looks of it, its having trouble accessing the ntfs partition to bot the OS. Is this because 2000 users a newer version of ntfs that the controller does not understand?
And if I am correct windows 2000 doesn't have the same limitation of 1024 cylanders as NT does. I think I'm going to try to reinstall now and bring the partition size down to 8gig and see if thats the answer.
Yes I did press F6 and install the manufacturers drivers for the raid card prior to installing 2k.
If this doesn't work I'm upgrading all bios.
please keep bringing on the ideas ;-)
thanks
ASKER
yep,
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
ASKER
yep,
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
ASKER
yep,
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
finally solved it
made the boot partition 8gig and the OS boots like a champ
ASKER
oops
quess thats what happens when you refresh the window after posting here
quess thats what happens when you refresh the window after posting here
ASKER
Good info.
Not specific, but indeed helped toward the resolution of the problem.
I thank everyone for your input and help!
Not specific, but indeed helped toward the resolution of the problem.
I thank everyone for your input and help!
I would delete all the RAID partition and reread the documentation, get all the latest BIOS's for the HP and the RAID controller, and start from scratch.
I hope this helps !