Cannot initialize SAS disks on PE 2950 with SAS 5/i controller

I'm having trouble initalizing two new 750Gb Seagate ST3750630SS SAS disks on my PE 2950 with a SAS 5/i controller.

When I enter the SAS config (using CTRL-C during post), I can see the drives, but they are reported as 0Gb size. When I check in Windows diskmanager, the size is reported as 687Gb, which looks right to me.

The server is running Windows 2003 Server x64 edition, and I have tried initalizing the disks with the normal Windows diskmanager, which tells me that the disks needs to be initialized before they can be used. However, when I try initializing them, I get an errormessage that says I should check the system event log for details - but there are no entries in the system event log concerning this.

I have also tried initializing the disks with the DELL SAS RAID Storage Manager, but there doesn't seem to be any possibilites for doing it that way.

 

I desperately need to get these disks initialized as the original disks in the server have failed once, and it would be nice to have them cloned before it happens again.

 

Can anybody guide me on the right track, or help me find out whether the disks are faulty or incompatible with the SAS 5/i?

 

wkr

Lars