Thank you for replying, but my main question was about being able to boot from a device that is connected to the motherboard's SATA port, regardless of the state of the RAID array.
BTW, the first thing I did after booting is that I updated the mobo and the Perc 6/i firmwares to the latest releases. Probably it won't matter much for the 6/i because it will be replaced with a H700 or H710 soon.
Back to booting, things just got a lot more complicated. Figured that the SSD connected to the mobo wasn't needed, so I removed it. Then the 610 would not boot, and I had to put the SSD back. Mind boggling.
This probably happened because I tried to put the OS on that drive initially. So I guess I need to experiment with various configurations a bit more....
When removing the SSD from the motherboard, where are you wanting to boot from? If the raid controller then you will need to change the SATA Settings in the BIOS, as well as confirm the boot order in the same.
>> When removing the SSD from the motherboard, where are you wanting to boot from?
Since I couldn't boot from the SSD, I created a VD, then a small boot partition on it, and when I installed the OS onto that one, and since it worked like the charm, I wanted to boot from that partition, but without the SSD in the system.
I removed the SSD to: 1. see what's on it 2. make sure it's active (it was) 3. potentially, see if it boots in another PC (a Precision T3500) but I didn't do that since I had to put it back into the T610
The boot order was correctly set in the BIOS.
FEDEX has my new controller at the moment, so I won't do much until I receive it.
Controller Management (Ctrl Mgmt) The Controller Management screen, Ctrl Mgmt, displays the product name, package, BIOS version, firmware version, BIOS Configuration Utility version, and boot block. Use this screen to perform actions on the controller and BIOS. You can use this screen to enable or disable the controller BIOS and the BIOS during bootup in event of BIOS errors. In addition, you can select a virtual disk from which to boot, select default settings, and reset the configuration.
My apologies for leading you guys on a wild goose chase -- after some additional testing using a couple of other PCs, it turned out that something is wrong with the SSD or the adapter I was using initially. I replaced the SSD, and the T610 it's booting fine now.
Since the boot process in safe mode stopped at loading disk.sys, I knew that it was disk.sys that didn't like something, and when the same thing happened in other known to be good PCs containing no other disks, then there was only one possibility left.
DELL-Stefan R
Moderator
•
790 Posts
0
February 1st, 2021 01:00
Hi JSz.
As long as the drive is connected to the PERC you should create a VD. Even if it is just a RAID0 with just one disc.
This lets the controller manage the drive as expected.
Also, you should check if the system and all of its components (e.g. PERC) are up to date.
Firmware and Driver downloads:
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/poweredge-t610/drivers
If you want to learn some more about the PERC 6/i, here is the User's Guide:
https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_dell_adapters/poweredge-rc-6i_user%27s%20guide_en-us.pdf
Hope that helped.
Best regards,
Stefan
JSz
1 Rookie
•
42 Posts
0
February 2nd, 2021 07:00
Thank you for replying, but my main question was about being able to boot from a device that is connected to the motherboard's SATA port, regardless of the state of the RAID array.
BTW, the first thing I did after booting is that I updated the mobo and the Perc 6/i firmwares to the latest releases. Probably it won't matter much for the 6/i because it will be replaced with a H700 or H710 soon.
Back to booting, things just got a lot more complicated. Figured that the SSD connected to the mobo wasn't needed, so I removed it. Then the 610 would not boot, and I had to put the SSD back. Mind boggling.
This probably happened because I tried to put the OS on that drive initially. So I guess I need to experiment with various configurations a bit more....
DELL-Chris H
Moderator
•
9.7K Posts
0
February 2nd, 2021 13:00
When removing the SSD from the motherboard, where are you wanting to boot from? If the raid controller then you will need to change the SATA Settings in the BIOS, as well as confirm the boot order in the same.
Let me know.
JSz
1 Rookie
•
42 Posts
0
February 6th, 2021 04:00
>> When removing the SSD from the motherboard, where are you wanting to boot from?
Since I couldn't boot from the SSD, I created a VD, then a small boot partition on it, and when I installed the OS onto that one, and since it worked like the charm, I wanted to boot from that partition, but without the SSD in the system.
I removed the SSD to:
1. see what's on it
2. make sure it's active (it was)
3. potentially, see if it boots in another PC (a Precision T3500) but I didn't do that since I had to put it back into the T610
The boot order was correctly set in the BIOS.
FEDEX has my new controller at the moment, so I won't do much until I receive it.
DELL-Young E
Moderator
•
5.4K Posts
0
February 7th, 2021 18:00
Hi, if I may, would this help?
https://dell.to/39ZYrNY
page 102
Controller Management (Ctrl Mgmt) The Controller Management screen, Ctrl Mgmt, displays the product name, package, BIOS version, firmware version, BIOS Configuration Utility version, and boot block. Use this screen to perform actions on the controller and BIOS. You can use this screen to enable or disable the controller BIOS and the BIOS during bootup in event of BIOS errors. In addition, you can select a virtual disk from which to boot, select default settings, and reset the configuration.
JSz
1 Rookie
•
42 Posts
0
February 20th, 2021 04:00
My apologies for leading you guys on a wild goose chase -- after some additional testing using a couple of other PCs, it turned out that something is wrong with the SSD or the adapter I was using initially. I replaced the SSD, and the T610 it's booting fine now.
Since the boot process in safe mode stopped at loading disk.sys, I knew that it was disk.sys that didn't like something, and when the same thing happened in other known to be good PCs containing no other disks, then there was only one possibility left.