Unseat the disks, then change back to raid in the bios. Accept the warnings and reboot. Power off and re-seat the disks and power on. The raid controller should find the config form the disk. If it stops at the raid with a nvram mismatch error, go into the raid bios. A message box will open asking which settings you want to use. Either nvram or disk. Select disk and it will read the config. Confirm it shows your logical disk as raid 5, i think it's F3 to show. Then exit, it will ask to save settings. Save and exit. Ignore any message about initialising your disk, as this would wipe them. Reboot and everything should be ok.
In the setup (bios), when you activate the raid. There are 2 channels. Your original config may have been channel A as raid and B as scsi. When you reset the raid you have selected both channels as raid. Now the server is looking for the 2nd channel, which may not be cabled. You can confirm this by looking inside the server. There should be a scsi cable from the riser (scsiA) to the backplane. There may also be a scsiB cable.
You can also confirm this in the raid bios as your disks should be numbered 0:0, 0:1 etc. With a 2nd channel the numbering would be 1:2 etc.
right click on the partition and select change drive letter from the drop down menu. Click change and give it a drive letter. It should be accessible in the os then.
You will get a warning about programs may not work but this is a standard windows message and can be ignored for this purpose.
i'll try and see what comes next and post here again
one more question if you please
i have the below error which requires me to press F1 every time the server boots
actually i have messed with bios settings because of it trying to fix it
i have done many step through documentation but i've found nothing
any ideas to fix it would be a great assist
here is the error
Invalid SCSI Configuration ;SCSI Cable Not Deteced on Connector SCSIB of the primary SCSI backplane Dauoghter Card Presnet Press F1 To Continue Press F2 To Enter setup
Googling the error returns loads of results which all point to a cable missing from the B channel. changing the B channel to scsi should clear the error but if you feel safer leaving then it should'nt cause any major issues apart from if the server reboots after updates/crashes etc it will always stop at the F1/F2 message.
tommo666
3 Apprentice
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1.2K Posts
1
June 29th, 2009 03:00
Unseat the disks, then change back to raid in the bios. Accept the warnings and reboot. Power off and re-seat the disks and power on. The raid controller should find the config form the disk. If it stops at the raid with a nvram mismatch error, go into the raid bios. A message box will open asking which settings you want to use. Either nvram or disk. Select disk and it will read the config. Confirm it shows your logical disk as raid 5, i think it's F3 to show. Then exit, it will ask to save settings. Save and exit. Ignore any message about initialising your disk, as this would wipe them. Reboot and everything should be ok.
Dev Mgr
4 Operator
•
9.3K Posts
1
June 29th, 2009 11:00
You can try to right click the data partition and select to assign a drive letter. Then see if you can see the data.
If it's gone, I'd suggest to grab your backups and start a restore from your most recent backup.
Once restored: never mess with the raid controller (setup) unless you are prepared to accept the risks.
Note: your data is only as important as the effort you spend to back it up.
tommo666
3 Apprentice
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1.2K Posts
1
July 1st, 2009 01:00
In the setup (bios), when you activate the raid. There are 2 channels. Your original config may have been channel A as raid and B as scsi. When you reset the raid you have selected both channels as raid. Now the server is looking for the 2nd channel, which may not be cabled. You can confirm this by looking inside the server. There should be a scsi cable from the riser (scsiA) to the backplane. There may also be a scsiB cable.
You can also confirm this in the raid bios as your disks should be numbered 0:0, 0:1 etc. With a 2nd channel the numbering would be 1:2 etc.
H_2
6 Posts
0
June 29th, 2009 09:00
First of all thanks a lot tommo666
I followed your exact steps
1-Unseat the disks
2- change back to raid in the bios
3- Accept the warnings and reboot
4- Power off and re-seat the disks and power on
the raid controller found the config form the disk
after that successfully system booted to the OS
but i still have a problem
the windows explorer shows only the os partition i'm still missing the data partition which is more important than the os partition
when i open disk management console ( diskmgmt.msc ) it shows me 4 partitions
1-C: os partition ( letter c assigned )
2- Dell Utility partition ( no drive letter assigned)
3- Data partition ( no drive letter assigned - no file system -also it shows its 100% free which is about 110GB)
4- Acronis True Image partition
i'm still missing the data partition any ideas how can i retrieve it
thanks again for your helpful soul
H_2
6 Posts
0
June 29th, 2009 14:00
Thanks Dev mgr for your reply
Disk Management shows 4 volumes
C: Os partition NTFS
data partition no drive letter assigned no file system it shows it free 100 %
other 2 partitions for Dell Uitlity and Acronis True Iamge
i have no backups atl all
can i safely assign it a letter or should i try any recovery program
what do you recommend me
thanks
H_2
6 Posts
0
June 30th, 2009 03:00
Here's what diskmgmt.msc shows exactly in the attached photo
i'm still missing data partition any hope to recover it
any ideas people of expert
thanks in advance for your help
tommo666
3 Apprentice
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1.2K Posts
0
June 30th, 2009 05:00
right click on the partition and select change drive letter from the drop down menu. Click change and give it a drive letter. It should be accessible in the os then.
You will get a warning about programs may not work but this is a standard windows message and can be ignored for this purpose.
H_2
6 Posts
0
June 30th, 2009 09:00
Thanks tommo666
i'll try and see what comes next and post here again
one more question if you please
i have the below error which requires me to press F1 every time the server boots
actually i have messed with bios settings because of it trying to fix it
i have done many step through documentation but i've found nothing
any ideas to fix it would be a great assist
here is the error
Invalid SCSI Configuration ;SCSI Cable Not Deteced on Connector SCSIB of the primary SCSI backplane Dauoghter Card Presnet Press F1 To Continue Press F2 To Enter setup
H_2
6 Posts
0
July 1st, 2009 03:00
Thanks a million tommo666
i've managed to reterive data partition but io'm worried to fix the raid channel problem
Half a loaf is better than no bread
tommo666
3 Apprentice
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1.2K Posts
0
July 1st, 2009 07:00
Googling the error returns loads of results which all point to a cable missing from the B channel. changing the B channel to scsi should clear the error but if you feel safer leaving then it should'nt cause any major issues apart from if the server reboots after updates/crashes etc it will always stop at the F1/F2 message.