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16550
SCSI NO RAID
Hi, wonder if anyone can help with this issue we having with our power edge 2850 ( [ADMIN NOTE: Service Tag removed per privacy policy])
a few days ago raid completely stopped working. Citing the firmware. was corrupt. And I couldn't access the raid utility either. Anyway got hold of the firmware updater for it which repaired it and updated It. But didn't seem to do much as got same issue upon reboot. Tried reseating all components in the machine. The settings in bios (integrated devices) seems to like changing to "off" randomly. Also cleared the nvram. Anyway we got fed up and decided to scrap the raid and use the six disks as individual and set it in integrated devices in bios to SCSI mode. but this made its own problems too. The OS flatly refuses to see the HDD's (Server 2008 R2) we found it difficult to obtain what we think are non raid drivers but unsure. When we use server 2008 x32 disk it sees some HDD's whys that?
please help we are pressed for time to get it back on as it's our main server.
Was 5x 73GB disks and one 35GB disk. But the 35 GB disk has been swapped for a 145GB disk instead
has 6GB ram too.
We we would now prefer not to use raid and have removed the raid ram, battery and key
theflash1932
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December 30th, 2013 21:00
Microsoft dropped support for miniport drivers in 2008R2 (which is why 2008 can see them). Try the backplane driver:
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/555/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-2850?driverId=KTK5F&osCode=WS8R2&fileId=3203980242&languageCode=EN&categoryId=SN
If that doesn't work, then you will need to do as Geoff suggests, enabling RAID and configuring each disk as a single-disk RAID 0 ... or use Server 2008.
DELL-Geoff P
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December 30th, 2013 14:00
You will need to reconnect the RAID key, battery and memory. Enter the controller bios (ctrl M) and set up RAID 0's on each drive. Then you can load an OS on one of the drives. You will need the 2003 x64 perc driver on a flash drive to install the OS, since the controller is not natively supported in Server 2008 R2. . Make sure its set to RAID in the F2 bios as well. Once its all setup, you can run it as a JBOD.
Scottbob9
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December 31st, 2013 05:00
Hi, thanks to both of you for replying. Tried what "theflash1931" suggested and Server 2008r2 could see no disks after installing the driver mentioned. But undettered i tried another disk combo. Currently i had a 73gb disk installed and a 140gb disk installed. Removed them both and replaced with two 73gb disks. Why can it not see my 140gb disk?
EDIT: The server can see 3 73GB drives but these in this image it wont see, why? (image here http://scottbob9.dragonluck.co.uk/dellcommunity/IMG_0101.JPG )
theflash1932
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December 31st, 2013 08:00
Possible your BIOS is out of date ... what version do you have? Larger disk support was added via BIOS update - don't remember which version. Those IBM drives are not officially supported to be compatible, but I have used several of the 36GB and 73GB versions in 2850's before, so I would "think" they should work.
Scottbob9
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December 31st, 2013 08:00
I'm running bios ver A04
Managed to get Sever 2008R2 to install onto one of the 3 drives it could see. after booting to desktop i inserted the other 3 drives (including the 140GB IBM one ) and it saw them all and told me i must format them which i have. all seems to be working now.
The bios could see the IBM one before but the installer refused to see it strangley. Would a bios update resolve that you think?
theflash1932
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December 31st, 2013 09:00
It's possible the BIOS updates the way the disks are handled and identified ... obviously I couldn't guarantee it :)
theflash1932
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December 31st, 2013 12:00
I would suggest doing a fresh FULL format of the floppy disk before putting the files on it ... they are very prone to errors, especially old ones.
Scottbob9
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December 31st, 2013 12:00
Thanks. Will try tomorrow morning. Did download the floppy disk installer but on launch it said "starting ms-dos" and then said "invalid command " or similar. So will fiddle tomorrow or use the windows installer version.
Happy new year
scott
Scottbob9
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January 10th, 2014 12:00
Hi, apologise for the lateness for reply, been away out the office.
unfortunately fully formatting the floppy disk didn't sort it. Used the windows bios update package and that updated it to A07. Which i think may have solved it but the drivers did too. Think the windows installer may not have liked some of the hard drives until it had booted to desktop and then inserted it.
Thanks for your help