PERC 5/E not showing in bios

P

p0lish

Gawd
Joined
Sep 11, 2002
Messages
642
I currently have a Dell PowerEdge 1850 with PCI-E riser board. I put in a PERC 5/E card for connection to a MD1000. The PERC 5/E does not show up in bios before it boots to VMWare. The unit originally came with a PCI-X riser board, but i swapped it myself. I'm new to the PowerEdge and PowerVault servers, so any help you can give is appreciated. The back of the PERC 5/E lights up 1 green and 1 amber.

-bill
 
What you mean by not showing in the Bios? It will not show under the Bios submenus and it would come right after a bios post. You need to hit ctrl+a or r (IIRC) to enter the controllers bios, it should prompt you on the screen. You will need to go into your bios and select raid to activate the controller.
 
Last edited:
No Ockie, the perc has to come up in the boot order screen in the bios so that you can tell it to boot from the array. I'm not sure though if it will show up in that list if you do not have a bootable array on the controller though.

OP, are you seeing the Controller Bios screen come up during the boot process. On my Perc 5i, it takes almost 20 seconds for the controller to id the drives and initialise the array. It feels like forever if you are in a hurry.

You will need to hit a key sequence to enter the controller setup screen and build the array.

Sorry, can't help you with the riser cards you are using.

Don
 
the card does not display it's bios boot message saying "hit ctrl-r for perc 5" it's not in the standard bios either. It's like it's not even connected, which is strange because it's getting power. I've tried both PCI-E slots with the same results.
 
It is looking like a bad card. You should be able to plug it into another system just to see if the bios screen comes up.

Don
 
DonDon said:
No Ockie, the perc has to come up in the boot order screen in the bios so that you can tell it to boot from the array. I'm not sure though if it will show up in that list if you do not have a bootable array on the controller though.

OP, are you seeing the Controller Bios screen come up during the boot process. On my Perc 5i, it takes almost 20 seconds for the controller to id the drives and initialise the array. It feels like forever if you are in a hurry.

You will need to hit a key sequence to enter the controller setup screen and build the array.

Sorry, can't help you with the riser cards you are using.

Don
Click to expand...
I may be incorrect, but that's how it works for me and I've got quite a few poweredge systems... quite a few ;)
 
Sounds like you might have a bad riser.

Try the card in another system to see if it does anything. If it works you have a bad riser, if it doesnt you have a bad controller.
 
Ockie said:
I may be incorrect, but that's how it works for me and I've got quite a few poweredge systems... quite a few ;)
Click to expand...

True, he is running it in the system it is actually designed to run in, so you are most likely right. I wasn't thinking that the Poweredge might have more bios ties to the perc than a non Dell system.

Mine shows up in the regular bios screen as a hard drive to select in the boot order even before the cards bios has initialized though.

Thanks for setting me straight.

Don
 
Update: Got a replacement Perc 5/E card, and the card shows up in bios and seems to be working as it should. When it first came up, it displayed problems from the previous boot with multi and single bit errors, and to replace the ram. Im gonna power cycle the server a few times after i have created the array to see if the problem persists. Thanks for everyone's help, and if anyone's seen a similar error, please let me know.

thanks
 
I am having now the same issue, bought new PCIe risers and new perc5/e, put it all together, the green led is on but it simply does not detect in the bios.

How did you manage to solve this problem? What can I do ? Before I had PCI-X risers in my PowerEdge 1950 III but the perc5/e didnt fit there so I've bought PCIe, thanks! :]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top