Yes, the S100 is the onboard RAID and H700 card would be an upgrade. H700 would definitely a better RAID controller. Imagine example an onboard GPU and a GPU card.
The CMOS battery would be a CR2032. If the system is left idle without power for a very long time, the CMOS battery would not last, so I'm guessing the BIOS will not retain it's previous settings, which by default SATA is set to RAID mode. That enables the on board S100.
At the moment, if the system is working fine, you would probably save a trip over. That depends on you.
Is one of the S100 and the H700 and on-board (main board) controller and the other on a card? There's a card in there into which the SATA cables are plugged for four drives in fact, in two virtual drives (I checked since posting).
CMOS Battery, perhaps. Just checked the system manual and find:
The system battery is a 3.0-volt (V), coin-cell battery.
which is not very helpful as I have loads of different coin-cell battery's on hand all with numbers. I probably have most of these formats on hand:
How long was it idle? Not sure, I'd need to research that with previous owner. Could have been months or years though. I will check the BIOS for the SATA mode but from memory it says RAID not AHCI. The machine is slightly off site (in the basement) and so a short trip to reboot and interact with the BIOS and experiment with this.
What puzzles me is why two PERCs on the system and I imagine one is on board the other a card but perhaps you can confirm. If so I imagine original owners added the H700 card to replace and onboard S100 for some reason. Advantages? Either way well spotted. All these boots and I never noticed the S11 vs H700 distinction.
From the POST details, there is 2 RAID controllers, 1 is S100,which is the software RAID controller, and another is H700. The virtual drive created would be on H700. It would usually take a moment to detect all drives and virtual disk, so that's normal.
Could you check in the BIOS in SATA mode, what mode would it be in? AHCI or RAID mode? Change it to AHCI mode, and try booting. Also, how long was the T310 offline or out of power? Do you have a CMOS battery spare to replace the current T310?
Under Series 6 & 7 they both appear. Though I'm not sure of whether the card I have is considered a H700 Adapter or H700 Modular.
When I go down tomorrow and open it up I'll make sure to note what I can. The count of SAS connectors would differentiate it I guess.
And I'll check the BIOS out to see if I can disable the S100 by setting SATA mode to AHCI in the BIOS.
As an aside I was frustrated today unable to access the boot sequence with F11 because I only had a keyboard with no F11 (only F1 to F10). Could find nowhere in the F2 BIOS menus to configure the keys so had to got find a full width keyboard from somewhere which I did in the end. Had to get into the boot sequence menu to boot off the USB Flash drive and install an OS. C'est la vie.
Quick updated. Am actually out of CR2032s. Plenty of CR2016s, only half as thick. So have the 32s on order.
But I found the BIOS setting for SATA. Only options were Off, ATA and RAID. So I selected Off and received a warning about data loss, shrug ignored that and continued. Itś a clean server install, worst case a reinstall ... but I suspect itś talking about drives on the main board SATA ports which there are none of.
Rebooted and yes! The S100 message is gone and H700 doesnt even identify itself as an H700 now just does its scan and finds the virtual drives. I slow but hey. I have achieved the outcome I set out to achieve, understood those messages and even lost a confusing one. Thanks heaps Joey!
DELL-Joey C
Moderator
•
4.1K Posts
1
May 6th, 2020 01:00
Hi,
Yes, the S100 is the onboard RAID and H700 card would be an upgrade. H700 would definitely a better RAID controller. Imagine example an onboard GPU and a GPU card.
The CMOS battery would be a CR2032. If the system is left idle without power for a very long time, the CMOS battery would not last, so I'm guessing the BIOS will not retain it's previous settings, which by default SATA is set to RAID mode. That enables the on board S100.
At the moment, if the system is working fine, you would probably save a trip over. That depends on you.
ThumbOne
14 Posts
0
May 6th, 2020 00:00
Thanks so much for the insights Joey!
Is one of the S100 and the H700 and on-board (main board) controller and the other on a card? There's a card in there into which the SATA cables are plugged for four drives in fact, in two virtual drives (I checked since posting).
CMOS Battery, perhaps. Just checked the system manual and find:
which is not very helpful as I have loads of different coin-cell battery's on hand all with numbers. I probably have most of these formats on hand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Button_cell
How long was it idle? Not sure, I'd need to research that with previous owner. Could have been months or years though. I will check the BIOS for the SATA mode but from memory it says RAID not AHCI. The machine is slightly off site (in the basement) and so a short trip to reboot and interact with the BIOS and experiment with this.
What puzzles me is why two PERCs on the system and I imagine one is on board the other a card but perhaps you can confirm. If so I imagine original owners added the H700 card to replace and onboard S100 for some reason. Advantages? Either way well spotted. All these boots and I never noticed the S11 vs H700 distinction.
DELL-Joey C
Moderator
•
4.1K Posts
0
May 6th, 2020 00:00
Hi @ThumbOne,
From the POST details, there is 2 RAID controllers, 1 is S100,which is the software RAID controller, and another is H700. The virtual drive created would be on H700. It would usually take a moment to detect all drives and virtual disk, so that's normal.
Could you check in the BIOS in SATA mode, what mode would it be in? AHCI or RAID mode? Change it to AHCI mode, and try booting. Also, how long was the T310 offline or out of power? Do you have a CMOS battery spare to replace the current T310?
ThumbOne
14 Posts
0
May 6th, 2020 05:00
Thanks again Joey. I have a CR2032s on hand and will replace it tomorrow maybe. I have some stats on theose PERCs from the DELL site:
https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-us/sln292279/list-of-poweredge-raid-controller-perc-types-for-dell-emc-systems?lang=en
Under Series 6 & 7 they both appear. Though I'm not sure of whether the card I have is considered a H700 Adapter or H700 Modular.
When I go down tomorrow and open it up I'll make sure to note what I can. The count of SAS connectors would differentiate it I guess.
And I'll check the BIOS out to see if I can disable the S100 by setting SATA mode to AHCI in the BIOS.
As an aside I was frustrated today unable to access the boot sequence with F11 because I only had a keyboard with no F11 (only F1 to F10). Could find nowhere in the F2 BIOS menus to configure the keys so had to got find a full width keyboard from somewhere which I did in the end. Had to get into the boot sequence menu to boot off the USB Flash drive and install an OS. C'est la vie.
ThumbOne
14 Posts
0
May 6th, 2020 18:00
Quick updated. Am actually out of CR2032s. Plenty of CR2016s, only half as thick. So have the 32s on order.
But I found the BIOS setting for SATA. Only options were Off, ATA and RAID. So I selected Off and received a warning about data loss, shrug ignored that and continued. Itś a clean server install, worst case a reinstall ... but I suspect itś talking about drives on the main board SATA ports which there are none of.
Rebooted and yes! The S100 message is gone and H700 doesnt even identify itself as an H700 now just does its scan and finds the virtual drives. I slow but hey. I have achieved the outcome I set out to achieve, understood those messages and even lost a confusing one. Thanks heaps Joey!