0 Physical Drives

Question

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'   -----   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   -----   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

LaDaraTech · Answer

The issue you are experiencing relates to the drivers for the SCSI controller. The floppy disk you used to updated the BIOS of the controller does NOT contain the drivers that windows can use.   Recommendation would be to use the Server Assistant CD from Dell to run the install prep on this machine. If you do not want to use that CD, then you would need the drivers for the Perc Controller http://ftp.us.dell.com/scsi-raid/perc-cerc-w2k-5.48-A04.exe   Uncompress this to the hard drive and copy the contents to a floppy that can be inserted  after the f6 option in the installer.   You might want to re-think your configuration of the Raid Drives. Most of the time, we recommend a Raid1 configuration of 2 Drives for the Operating System and a Raid5 setup for the Data Drives. This keeps your operating system separate from the Data and allows for better management of the access users get.   Using a RAID1 for the OS allows for a HD failure without bringing down the system (mirrored drive will kick in) and your applications and data would be on the Raid5 array. (this provides redundancy for the applications and data so if a drive fails; you can insert a new drive and have it rebuild the array while you continue to work without loss of anything.   Hope that helps.

virtuekid · Answer

Yes!   Thank you! Now I can finally install the OS. I took your advice and set up 2 logical drives, the OS on a RAID 1 (composed of 2 disks) and the data on a RAID 5 (composed of the remaining 4 disks). Thanks.   Now I've learned about RAID servers.

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

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