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Dell PowerEdge 2900 Server

Good morning. I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 loaded with Windows Server 2003 R2 that will not boot to the OS. It is currently configured with a hardware RAID controller is utilizing RAID 5 and has 4 SAS HDD's installed. When booting, I get the error message "No boot device available", which I know means that one of the HDD's has failed, but shouldn't this machine go ahead and boot with a different HDD? Am I missing something to get this to boot to a different HDD?

Thanks for the assistance.

PowerEdgeTech

When booting, I get the error message "No boot device available", which I know means that one of the HDD's has failed, but shouldn't this machine go ahead and boot with a different HDD? Am I missing something to get this to boot to a different HDD?

If you are using hardware RAID, this doesn't mean "one of the HDD's has failed" ... it either means that MORE than one of the drives has failed, or the Windows boot files are screwed up.

Boot to CTRL-R then go to the PD MGMT screen ... what is the status of each drive there?

rindi

Besides meaning the windows boot files being screwed, it could also mean that the boot order in the BIOS has changed and you aren't trying to boot from the array.

Steven Black

ASKER

In PD Mgmt 01:00 thru 01:02 are showing the state as being "Foreign". Disk 01:03 shows the state as being "Ready". When attempting to boot to Windows, bios does state that one of the drives has failed, but it does not indicate which one of the four. Theses are all SAS 146GB drives.

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PowerEdgeTech

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