PERC 3/Di and Ghost

Hi Vitaliy,

All of our PowerEdge Raid Controller (PERC) have native support for DOS, no drivers required.

However for DOS to read the partitions, they must be formatted in FAT - NTFS partitions cannot be read from DOS.


Mark Ables __________ Dell|Talk Moderator
Dell PowerEdge Server E-support and Services
____Please include a Service Tag Number in _____
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try downloading the Elite diags diskette...

it contains DOS drivers, however Dell does not offically support these...

go to support.dell.com and download elite50.exe and you will find various drivers for DOS for both the AMI and Adaptec controllers...check the config.sys to see which files refer to what...

Hey Mark A

What about the Dell PowerEdge 1400sc it is not a raid controller but it is a SCSI 39160 chip and i have not been able to get a ghost or Dos disk to find the SCSI controller at boot up. Any Help??


DELL-Mark A wrote:
- Hi Vitaliy,
-
- All of our PowerEdge Raid Controller (PERC) have
- native support for DOS, no drivers required.
-
- However for DOS to read the partitions, they must be
- formatted in FAT - NTFS partitions cannot be read
- from DOS.
-
-
-
- Mark Ables __________ Dell|Talk Moderator
- Dell PowerEdge Server E-support and Services
- ____Please include a Service Tag Number in _____
- ____all posts for the most accurate response.____

Hi,

A bootable floppy with Scsi drivers can be made downloading CDENAB.EXE
http://support.dell.com/us/en/filelib/download/index.asp?fileid=R19775

Thanks

Thanks for using the Dell | Talk Forums

Mark Ables __________ Dell|Talk Moderator
Dell PowerEdge Server E-support and Services
____Please include a Service Tag Number in _____
____all posts for the most accurate response.____

I'm not sure if the Ultra 160 driver exists in CDENAB.EXE...

You can definitely use these DOS drivers straight from adaptec and insert them in your config.sys as a device driver and it should work fine.

The filename is ultra160_fms_v112.exe

http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.html?cat=/Product/ASC-39160&filekey=ultra160_fms_v112.exe

Hi,

we usually create a 9 GB NTFS system partition (RAID 1) and make an image of it with Symantec Ghost 7.5 on Compaq servers. However on Dell PowerEdge 2500 (Service Tag: FLTFF0J) the partitions cannot be be seen.

Which Tool oder driver do I need to make an image of the system partition?

Thanks in advance for any advice

Renke

Hi All,

I am trying to ghost a dell 2650 server. I have created a dos scsi boot disk and have also used the elite511.exe to add in the driver. I have also made the relevant changes in the config.sys.

I have also checked a range of versions of the driver all to now avail.

 

I have tried all the relevant actions posted here- nothing.

 

I will reccommend that we dont buy any more 2650's as we cant ghost them as the raid controller cant be loaded in dos, and accessed via ghost version 2002.

Could anyone please post links that work and detailed descriptions on how to boot of a dos boot disk, load the scsi driver for the perc 3di and be able to access the Hard disks via ghost 2002.

 

Please Please.

We are working on a large deployment this fall (hundreds of 2650s)...and I'm VERY concerned about this issue. I have found no one with a definative answer on how to reliably clone a 2650 with PERC3/Di. We arn't ghost experts, but this could make us re-think the 2650 as well (although we have had no problems using ghost with our 1750s). We have found that Ghost hangs the 2650 (unresponsive to Ctrl-Alt-Del) when you select the "drive". Ocasionally it will alllow you through to the "select partition" screen (<10%)...you should try:

• Driver in the Elite Diag Util Disk
• Enable Int 13h
• Enable Direct ASPI access
• Partition clones only (we speculate that this makes ghost use higher level access)

We have not successfully tested the restore yet...I suspect that there will be similar problems.

FYI - We are still on Ghost 7.5...

Non Encrypted NTFS can be read from dos.

http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm


NTFS Reader DOS Boot Disk provides read access to NTFS drives from the MS DOS environment. It supports long filenames as well as compressed and fragmented files. NTFS Reader for DOS allows you to preview the files on NTFS and copy them from NTFS to FAT volumes or network drives. In order to use the software you need to copy the readntfs.exe file to a bootable floppy disk and boot from it.

NTFS Reader for DOS is a FREEWARE

Software features:
Can be saved and run from bootable floppy (download boot disk image)
Displays complete physical and logical drive information
Supports IDE / ATA / SCSI drives
Supports large (more than 8GB) Hard Drive
Supports NTFS, NTFS5 file systems for reading
Supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 file systems for data writing
Supports compressed and fragmented files on NTFS
Supports partitions created in MS-DOS, Windows XP.2000.NT.ME.98.95
Displays non-english and long file names
Ability to preview file(s)/folder(s) before copying
Supports search by file name or mask
Disk Viewer displays content of the file in Hex/Text mode

I use Powerquest to image 2650's all the time... you dont need to make any type of driver disk.  Powerquest imaging sees the partitions and disks natively.... I cant imagine Ghost not working either.  Its just a disk drive to the DOS OS.... doesnt make any difference that it is RAID or not.

That stinks about ghost.  We image as part of our server gold disk process, and we image to the 4600, 2650, and 6650.... not to mention pretty much all Compaq and many IBM server models..... all using powerquest drive image (deploycenter)  No issues.  I dont do a lot of cloning.... I build a network boot disk using DOS, then load powerquest from a network share, then create or restore an image from/to that network share...  works great.

Yeah, the 2850 is coming soon.... cant wait.  Not really for the PERC4.... I like the PERC3Di's just fine.  I want the new DRAC4's and 6 drive slots!

Thanks...I'll give that a run.  FYI - There is a known issue with GHOST & the PERC3 controller.  They recommended upgrading to PERC4 to better support cloning.  This also fits with my experience that 1750s clone reliably; however, 2650s are problematic.  Regardless...the PERC3 is going away with the launch of the 2850...the 2650s are probably going to disapear around January.

just my 2¢

Quick last note:

SUCCESS!  We have had a lot more success using Ghost 7.5 to clone 2650s by allowing the system time after Ghost presents the drive selection screen.  It is very puzzeling; however, ghost appears to work more reliably if you wait 1-2 minutes before selecting a drive to clone.  Take your time, appearently the controler takes its...  If you have an explaination, I'd be interested.  Just what we have observed with ours.