Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
55 Posts
0
8474
September 20th, 2010 14:00
PE 2850 Perc Virtual Disk
I've been rebuilding a PE 2850 and had some trouble creating a Virtual disk. I'm starting with a simple striped two-disk raid-0 array (yes, I understand the fault tolerance implications and plan to upgrade to RAID-5 at some future date when I've got a spare hard drive). However when I attempt to build a virtual disk I end up not being allowed to using the Dell setup boot disks or OpenManage Server Administrator. I get words to the affect of LSI SCSI non-RAID mode. When I look at the hardware configuration I don't see PERC, just LSI. This leads me to believe that this system doesn't have the PERC installed (or its non-operational). When I look in box I'm seeing a RAID Key installed and a 256MB RAM chip installed in the RAID slot. This is the 3xPCI-X riser card. Is there some other piece of hardware I'm missing? Have I installed a driver wrong? Should I be downloading an array manager to do the configuration?
The system has Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 installed currently, but I'll blow it away and start over if need be.
reybeast1
347 Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 16:00
when you go into your system bios (F2), then into integrated devices, what is the embedded raid controller set to "SCSI Enabled" (this is the default)?
toscrawford
55 Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 17:00
It said SCSI enabled. I switched it to RAID enabled. Viola. There it is. Thanks.
If I have any related problems I'll let you know.
toscrawford
55 Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 18:00
I can see the disks, but Windows 7 can't. What driver should I be installing to enable the Windows 7 x32 installation disk to see my drives? I think I'm the PERC 4E/DI
toscrawford
55 Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 19:00
I'm likely to yank the 3xPCI-X controller and replace it with a PCI-Express controller. Will that change my RAID or RAID drivers (PE2850)? Will it mess with the virtual disk assigned with the previous controller? If so, how do I prevent losing the partition I've just configured?
toscrawford
55 Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 19:00
Found a 2003 x32 signed driver from 2008 that worked for my PERC 4e/DI. LSI megaraid 320-2x I think.
theflash1932
11 Legend
•
16.3K Posts
0
September 20th, 2010 20:00
If you take out the PCI-X riser and put in a PCIe riser, watch out for a couple of things:
1) The RAID controller is on the riser, so your RAID array and the data thereon will not exist on the new controller (riser). However, the RAID configuration is written to the drives as well, so when you power up with the new riser, you must go to CTRL-M, Configure, View/Add, view the Disk Configuration, and Save the configuration.
2) As you can only replace the riser with another riser made for the 2850, they will both PERC 4e/Di, so the RAID drivers will not change.
3) The firmware may be different between the two controllers. Ideally, you would only swap out controllers with matching firmware, as there may be features and/or settings in place by a newer controller that cannot be supported or even recognized by older firmware (or something on older controllers no longer supported by newer firmware).
4) Not all 2850 motherboards support PCIe risers. The first motherboard only shipped with (and can only support) PCI-X risers.