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Dell PE 1850 Hard Drives Missing
Hello,
So i recently acquired a Dell PE 1850. The person before me had a Dell Power vault 220s connected to it via a installed SCSI card. I have unnatched the power vault but still have it and am trying to boot the server, but it doesnt work. The server has two seagate cheetah 10k 146gb drives in them but no OS loads on a regular boot. I have tried booting and installing windows server 2008 R2 via a flash drive but when i get to the select hard drive screen none appear to be selected. Right now i am cleaning the hard drives from the PERC configuration page. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make them show up when i try to install the OS? I am assuming that it has something to do with the initial BIOS settings. Any and all help would be great!
Thanks for all the help!
theflash1932
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December 25th, 2012 12:00
That is recent enough that that should not be the problem.
I tend to think you are doing something wrong with loading the driver (sorry) ...
Use the
Download the driver and run to extract the files - you should end up with the following files:
Put your installation USB in and open it in Windows Explorer, create a new folder in the root of the drive, then put your extracted files from above into the folder:
Then boot to the USB to install. On the screen where no drives are seen, click on the Load Drivers link in the bottom-left corner. Click on Browse, then go to the folder you put the drivers in, then click OK and select the driver, and click Next ... the "drive" you configured in the PERC BIOS should now be visible to install to.
theflash1932
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December 24th, 2012 13:00
First, you must have RAID configured before Windows can see any disks to install to.
Second, you may need the RAID driver. Which RAID controller are you using? The onboard PERC 4e/Si?
chuckn926
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December 24th, 2012 14:00
Yes i am using the onboard RAID Controller. I don't know much on how to configure the controller though.
chuckn926
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December 24th, 2012 14:00
Ok so i downloaded the hard drive version and have tried to open it in the .exe file and the extracted version from the Windows Server 2008 R2 driver page and it doesn't come up either way. It is on a different flash drive than the one that the OS is on is this a problem?
theflash1932
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December 24th, 2012 14:00
"Which of those drivers do i need to download? "
The "hard drive" version.
"I have set up a RAID Array of 0 and have initialized it. I still don't see it when i try to install windows though. Is this because i don't have the driver?"
Yes, exactly. You realize that RAID 0 is not redundant, right? If one disk fails, then ALL your data on both disks is gone. RAID 1 is the most-used and safest RAID level - also called a 'mirror', both disks have identical data, so if one ever dies, then the system will stay up and accessible with the remaining disk.
theflash1932
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December 24th, 2012 14:00
There's not much to it ... it is done in CTRL-M.
Once it is configured, you will need to load this driver (hard drive version - run to extract before use):
www.dell.com/.../poweredge-1850
chuckn926
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December 24th, 2012 14:00
Which of those drivers do i need to download?
I have set up a RAID Array of 0 and have initialized it. I still don't see it when i try to install windows though. Is this because i don't have the driver?
Thanks for all the help so far!!!
theflash1932
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December 24th, 2012 15:00
Yes, as long as you have configured RAID, then the drivers are the reason the disks cannot be seen.
Boot drive or not, you should be able to put a folder with the drivers on the USB ... I do this ALL the time.
What is the firmware version of your PERC? There is a minimum supported version for the driver for 2008 R2. You can find the firmware version by going to CTRL-M, Objects, Adapter.
chuckn926
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December 24th, 2012 15:00
Unfortunately the flash drive I'm using is a boot drive so i cant add any files to it. And when i say it doesn't come up. I have it look for any files that can load drivers and it comes up for none when i am looking for them during OS installation.
theflash1932
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December 24th, 2012 15:00
You can put the drivers on the same USB drive that you install with ... I usually just create a folder on the installation USB called drivers, then put the 6-8 extracted files in there, then just browse to that folder after clicking on Load Driver.
You said you were able to download it, but then you said it didn't come up ... what exactly is happening?
chuckn926
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December 24th, 2012 15:00
So i figured out a way to put the files on the USB that the OS is on but it still doesn't find them when it looks for them. it says that there are no signed drivers that can be used. Is this the only reason that the hard drives aren't visible during installation?
chuckn926
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December 25th, 2012 09:00
The firmware version is 5A2D
chuckn926
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December 25th, 2012 14:00
Thank you so much. I feel like kind of a fool now for not selecting the driver itself. All of your help was extremely helpful and i greatly appreciate it! Have a great holidays.
theflash1932
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December 25th, 2012 18:00
No problem ... happens to the best of us, right? Merry Christmas.