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jeremywatco

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Proliant 1600 Sticks Initializing Raid Controller

Didnt really know what section to list this under, so here we go....

We have an old Proliant 1600 with a Compaq 3200 Raid Controller in it (4 drives). Now the weird thing is that when booting up it will stick on Initializing the Raid controller and none of the drive lights light up.  Now if I power it down and power it back up it sometimes will work fine....

Now, I tried re-running smart start again today and starting off from scratch so I could turn this into a small test server, however smart start will get stuck in the Hardware configurator at Saving Settings.


Don't really know whats up with this server.. this issue just started happeing.. i re-seated all the drives & put the Raid card into a different PCI slot but its still does it.
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PsiCop
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I would suspect your CPQ3200 adapter is failing. Try running the diagnostics on the SmartStart CD.

Or it could be another component - RAM, motherboard. Run the full suite.

The 1600 is pretty old, as I recall. They're workhorses, but they do eventually fail.

If you have another 3200 RAID adapter, try swapping it out. As I recall, the RAID information is written to the disks themselves - the adapter is interchangable as long as you stay within the same adapter "family".
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sloopeth

whilst the machine is old etc is it possible something has changed with regard to termination?

in your case it would seem unlikely but worth considering (and easy to check) that the termination has changed or the terminator failed? try swapping/reseating the cable and changing the terminator before resigning it to the scrapheap

good luck
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Ok.. here is where I am at now.. the system wont finish the smart start process because it keeps locking up when it tries to save hardware settings... how do i run the dianostics off the smart start cd.. everytime i put it in it just starts the system configurator all over again.
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PsiCop
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Thanks for all the help.. i never did figure out how to run diagnostics from the Smart Start CD, however I was able to insert it into my workstation & create a disk that upgrades the firmware on the Raid Controller, I did that and so far no more issues.... we have been having some power outages latley and the UPS that was on this server didn't function properly, could that have corrupted the firmware?
I don't see how firmware could have been corrupted. That's on an EEPROM, its not casually toyed with.

What may be more likely is that the RAID info on one or more drives got corrupted, and the older firmware could not deal with it. The newer firmware can handle it and either workaround the problem or perhaps even fix it.
Do you still have this system and the smartstart software?