0 Physical Drives

Okay,

 

Before I begin, I will put out that I know nothing of RAID setups. So I could be making a very obvious mistake and not know it.

 

I have a Dell Poweredge 2850, with a PERC 4e/Di SCSI adaptor on it. I have 6 hard drives, all properly inserted into the machine. I want to install Windows 2000 server with RAID 5. I cannot get the Poweredge to detect the physical drives though. Here are ALL the questions I have.

 

BIOS settings. In the BIOS, there's a section for the Embedded RAID Controller. I can set it to "SCSI Enabled" and then both Channel A and Channel B become SCSI, or I can set it to
"RAID Enabled", which would make Channel A mandatorily set to RAID, while Channel B I can set to either RAID, or SCSI.

 

Since I want a RAID 5 setup, I choose the RAID enabled BIOS settings, which Channel A set to RAID and Channel B set to SCSI.

 

I exit the BIOS and save the changes that I've made. When I am prompted to press CTRL + M to configure the adaptor, I do just that. This is how I set up the RAID...

 

I browse through the following Menus

 

Configure >> Clear Configuration >> (Clear Configurations?) Yes.

 

Configure >> New Configuration >> (Proceed?) Yes >> **I press space to select all 6 hard drives that I have, then press Enter to End Arrary** >> F10 to Configure

 

When I press F10 to Configure, a new window pops up.

 

Select Configurable Arrays.

 

I press Spacebar and SPAN 1 pops up. I press F10 to Configure.

 

Another new window pops up. It looks something like this:

 

Logical Drive 00

RAID = 5

SIZE 699500MB

ACCEPT

 

So I choose ACCEPT. It prompts me to Save, I say Yes to the save. It says Configuration has been saved, to press any key. I press any key. Now I press ESC to get to the main menu again.

 

From the main menu, I do the following:

 

Initialize >> Logical Drive 0 >> (Initialize?) Yes >> Initializing 0%... 100%

 

Once the drive has been initialized I press ESC to exit this utility. It tells me to reboot the computer. I CTRL + ALT + DEL to reboot.

 

When it boots up I have the following:

 

1 Logical Drive detected by Host Adaptor

0 Physical Drives detected by Host Adaptor

1 Logical Drive detected by BIOS

0 Physical Drives detected by BIOS

 

So I went to www.dell.com and downloaded the drivers for a SCSI Raid Controller for my adaptor (PERC 4e/Di) (I downloaded this: BR126663.exe) and ran the floppy image on a floppy. I booted the server from the floppy disk and it updated... stuff. I don't really know what the floppy updated but it updated a lot of stuff. Either way when it finished I rebooted and I still have 0 physical drives found.

 

I run the Windows 2000 Server installation CD and I press F6 for additional SCSI drivers. I press S and insert the same floppy. No results. I must obviously have the wrong floppy for the job. Because I get the following error message:

 

" Setup cannot find the following file "txtsetup.oem". Setup cannot continue"

 

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Questions:

 

Where do I get the drivers for the Windows Installation?

 

How can I get the physical drives to be detected? If I try to install without press F6, Windows setup cannot detect any hard drives, so setup cancels itself.

 

Did I set the BIOS up correctly with RAID ENABLED, Channel A = Raid, Channel B = SCSI

 

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I am somewhat computer savvy but most of the forums I've found people talking about the solution to this leave me in the dust with... what seems to be a foreign language.

 

I hope someone can provide me with the answers I seek to get this Poweredge up and running.

 

I also hope this garbled post makes sense =)

 

~Bruce