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3 Posts
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188753
August 15th, 2012 05:00
Slow boot T3600 with raid controller.
Hi,
we just received a few T3600 destops and the boot via the raid controller is very slow, takes up to 2,5 minute.
I removed the raid controller and hooked the SSD directly to the SATA port and the boot is is now very fast.
We do not use a raid configuration in those systems and therefore i removed the card and connect the SSD directly.
Now my issue,
in those sytems are 2 HDD's and one DVD drive,
I connected the SSD to SATA0 and the DVD whas on SATA1. Now, i wanted to connect the second HDD and see only connectors named HDD0 to 3.
When connected the drive is not recognized and i cannot find in the bios how to activate the drive. I see only SATA0 and 1 in the bios.
Anny help would be appreciated,
regards,
Ron
RGielgens
3 Posts
0
August 16th, 2012 00:00
No one??
isburns
10 Posts
0
September 24th, 2012 18:00
I'm experiencing the same behaviour, the boot time seems abnormally long due to the initialization of the PERC H310 raid controller. I'd love to disable/remove it, but I need more than the 2 SATA ports that are active on the motherboard. Did you call DELL to see if anything could be done?
RGielgens
3 Posts
0
September 25th, 2012 00:00
Yes i did, but the answer was that the additional ports (HDD0 to HDD3) on the T3600 cannot be activated. On a T5600 it would be possible according to Dell support but this wont help me.
What i did is, i removed the controller card and put in a SATA controller card for additional ports. This boots the machine as it should be.
MH-Nova
2 Posts
0
January 16th, 2013 12:00
We have the exact same issue! My IS tech spent 1.5H today with DELL tech support and he was told at the end that "it is what it is, the system is built that way".
I truely missed the T3500 generation.
BTW, DELL seems to Design their computers like Honda designs their cars now: one good generation, one bad, but never 2 goods in a row...
MH-Nova
2 Posts
0
January 18th, 2013 13:00
We finally found a solution. You can try this:
Hardware modifications:
1) Remove completely the PERC card
2) Connect bootable HDD on SATA1 port
3) Connect DVD on SATA0 port
Software modifications:
1) Install latest BIOS (A7 as of today, www.dell.com/.../precision-t3600)
2) Download/Install latest storage driver (www.dell.com/.../precision-t3600)
Test procedure:
1) Connect a 2nd HDD on HDD0 connector of the mainboard (Only for test purpose)
2) Power-up system; make sure BIOS version is A7. Boot time shall be around 30 seconds or so.
3) Make sure system boots on SATA1 HDD with pre-installed OS (Win 7 Pro 64-bit in our case)
4) Click on computer icon: make sure the system recognize the 2 HDD. If you see 2 HDD, everything is OK and system can be delivered to customer. If you see only bootable HDD, check following steps
5) You see only 1 HDD: go to device manager; there shall be a “!” mark beside “SAS controller” device. This means that the latest storage driver is not there or was not installed properly. Download it (see item 2 from Software section above) and update manually the driver with this new version. Once updated, the second HDD will be recognized. System is ok now.
With this config, this allows to boot on SATA1, and using HDD0 to HDD3 for any new HDD we would like to add down the road.
LonManJMU
1 Message
0
April 26th, 2013 06:00
Worked like a charm! Booting my T3600 takes half the time now that the PERC card is out. Yanked out the patch cables and went straight to SATA1 with main boot drive. Am using SATA0 as well and did have trouble getting OS to see 2nd drive. Just went to www.dell.com and picked up the latest SATA storage driver and the drive popped up the moment the driver installed. Thanks very much for the post MH !
DELL-Roshan L
6 Operator
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4.4K Posts
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May 31st, 2013 05:00
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