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May 28th, 2004 05:00
firmware update and raid question
I have a dell poweredge 6400 . During the bootup, I get a message to update the firmware. It does boot cleanly so I am not sure how much this is an issue. The raid card is a perc 2. What advantage is having the DOSA CD? I am running raid 5 with 4 36 gig ibm scsi 160 drives. I would like to know the procedure on having an additional drive as a hot spare. I think I that during the boot up, I press control m and rebuild the new drive and designate it as a hot spare. Is this correct? I bought the machine used and have no documentation on it. I am using gentoo operating system.
DELL-Mark A
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May 28th, 2004 12:00
1) The update firmware message is probably the ESM or Backplane and the application of these 2 files will resolve the problem:
Dell System BIOS, PowerEdge 6400, A13
FileName: PE6400-BIOSA13.exe [521 KB  Release Date: 4/24/2003
Dell ESM Firmware, PowerEdge 6400, A57
Filename: PE6400-ESMA57.exe [405 KB]
2) The DOSA will be of no advantage if you are using the gentoo Operating System.
3) To create the HotSpare, install the drive, reboot the system hitting CTRL-M when prompted for the Perc 2/dc BIOS.
Choose Objects > Physical Drives > highlight the new drive (it will be labeled READY) > Press Enter > choose Make HotSpare > Choose YES at the prompt.
4) Complete documentation for the PowerEdge 6400 can be found here.
Complete documentation for the Perc 2/dc can be found here.
Thanks for using the Dell Community Forums!
DELL-Mark A
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May 28th, 2004 16:00
The option for adding the drive in the CTRL-M Perc BIOS is called Reconstruct. This option is not available in all versions of the firmware. If you do not see the Reconstrct option in the BIOS, it will be available using this DOS based software:
Perc II, Perc 2/sc, Perc 2/dc, Utility, MS-DOS, v. 2.31, A02
FileName: DOS231.exe [113 KB]  Release Date: 9/25/2000
rtaber
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May 28th, 2004 16:00
Thank you very much Mark. Again, I have the poweredge 6400 with the perc2 controller. I am running raid 5 with 4 physical disks. If I want to increase the capacity of my system and want to add one more drive to the array: I would install the additional drive (#5) and hit control m during the reboot and would I simply have the drive rebuilt. How would I get the new drive into the array. The new drive will be at least the size of the other drives.
Richard Taber
rtaber@rtaber.com