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PE T410 won't boot past UEFI with Seagate Desktop Expansion USB 3.0 HDD
Hi,
So one of my clients who I rarely see and aren't real good about getting me out there to do maintenance, told me that there was a yellow light on the front of the server. Turns out they lost a drive in their RAID5 array. So I have to update BIOS, the BMC and the Perc 6/i Controller just to get OpenManage installed. Everything is cool, until we get to BIOS 1.11.0. Turns out that something changed between 1.0.5 and that, that stops this machine from booting past the UEFI is initializing screen with the Seagate Desktop Expansion USB 3.0 HDD drive plugged in to the front USB ports. It's trying to boot off of it most likely, but I can't get into the UEFI screen with the drive plugged into to disable booting off of the USB drive. This is going to be a real <ADMIN NOTE: Substitute character removed as per terms of use>, as these drives are used as their backup, and if I can't reboot the server with those drives plugged in, I'm.
Is there something I'm missing that works around this problem. But this machine seemingly booted with these drives plugged in before. Is there a secret newer version of the BIOS that fixes this problem? We're out of warranty on this machine by about a year, but I'd like to get this issue resolved.
Running Windows 2k8 SP2 x64 and Exchange 2007 and Sharepoint 2007.
I don't know if it's a USB 3.0 -> 2.0 problem or the fact that the drives are 1TB or something else. Any ideas?
Thanks!
DELL-Geoff P
990 Posts
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June 20th, 2013 07:00
The Seagate Desktop Expansion drive is for PC's and wasn't designed to be a backup for servers. If they need an external backup source, look at getting them the RD1000 external backup device: http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-rd1000/pd?refid=pvaul_rd1000&baynote_bnrank=0&baynote_irrank=0&~ck=baynoteSearch&isredir=true . This won't interfere with what you are doing and still provide proper backups.
Regards,
Dkalmick
11 Posts
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June 20th, 2013 12:00
With all do respect, I've had a horrible time with the RD1000 units. They don't support Windows Server Backup Service (we like to keep things REALLY simple) and the drives are excessively expensive. I think that the Seagate Drives weren't designed for 'anything' specially. It's a 3.5" SATA into a USB 3.0 bridge. We're using it for backup nothing more.
What I wanted to bring to light was that these drives booted without issue until we went to 1.11.0 in our BIOS. So my question is: Is there a newer or older BIOS version that these will work in, or is there a USB 3.0 add-in card that'll work with these drives that will allow the server to boot/reboot, with them plugged in?
DELL-Geoff P
990 Posts
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June 20th, 2013 16:00
You can experiment with 3.0 USB cards, though none of them have been tested or certified in our servers. It will be a hit and miss process and may work. Its just not supported. The external drives are not supported either. Someone in the community may have figured a way around it.
Regards,
Dkalmick
11 Posts
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June 20th, 2013 16:00
Cool...fingers crossed.