• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

SCSI backplane configuration questions?

P

Phrostbit

n00b
Joined
Jan 8, 2006
Messages
16
Ok... I've been scratching my head on this one for a couple days now and am just about ready to tear out my hair.

I've got a Dell Poweredge 2850 with ROMB and a 1x6 SCSI U320 backplane. I plan to install Win2k3 Enterprise SR1 on it.

I have the following hard drives in the corresponding backplane slots:

0- Fujitsu 73GB
1- Fujitsu 73GB
2- Seagate 73GB
3- Seagate 73GB
4- Seagate 73GB
5- Seagate 73GB

I also have a LSI Megaraid 320-2 Raid card installed in one of the PCI-X slots.

Ideally I would like the following configuration:

Drives 0-1 in RAID1
Drives 2-4 in RAID5
Drive 5 as global hot spare
**All of these will be running from the LSI Megaraid card with the onboard SCSI disabled.

For the longest time Windows 2003 setup puked my RAID1 config and I finally figured out it was because I had set "Read Ahead" on the array. Disabling that allowed me to get the operating system installed.

The problem I'm having now is getting the RAID 5 to work. This is a 1x6 backplane, so while I know it's not ideal, the RAID5 is on the same SCSI channel as the RAID 1.

I can format all the drives OK in the LSI Megaraid util, and create the RAID 5 with no problems. Currently I have been trying: NO Read Ahead, Write Thru, I/O Direct, and a 64KB stripe. When Win2k3 boots it sees the drive as unpartitioned space. When I go to create a partition on it that works fine as well. However the kicker is when I try to format it in DiskManager. It goes all the way to 100% quickly, then it just sits there at 100% for several minutes. After this is fails all the way to a blue screen of death with a stop error for bad hardware and a 0x4 error message.

Is there a better way to get this to work? Why is my format failing at the last on the RAID 5, but the RAID 1 seems to be flawless?

Any and all help would be appreciated, this is kicking my butt! :( :mad: :confused:
 
Phrostbit said:
"no one wants to take a stab at this!?" bump.
Click to expand...

My business runs on 3 PE2800 series Servers and we use RAID 1 and 5 with no issues.

There are quite a few firmware updates available for the 2800 series, so I'd start there. Next download and install the Openmanage Server administrator software and run the diagnostics and see the results of that.

Last if your still having issues check the warranty status as you may have a failing backplane, cable, raid card, etc.
 
I agree with SJ although it does sound like a firmware or driver issue, possibly mismatched versions. I know on the IBM RAID controller I am running in this box, IBM strongly suggests making sure your driver and firmware are the same version and I have seen odd results befoe with loading Win with an older driver from a floppy during install when the controller had much newer firmware. I've also always had the best luck only configuring the mirror volume for the OS when installing the OS then going back in and adding/configuring the RAID 5 volume and any hotspares in the controller after Windows is up and running and I've verified it runnign the right drivers, etc.
 
As stated above, run firmware updates for the controller, backplane, and BIOS (A04 came out not too long ago).

Another thing. Do you have the funds to purchase the extra card for the second channel ? It would go into the very left of the backplane if your looking at it from the top with the cover open. It would be well worth the money having the drive on the separate channel.

Other than that, it looks like you might have a bad backplane (I've been seeing this more often on 2850s and 6850s) or a bad RAID card/RAID key.

Just my thoughts.
 
Rocco123 said:
As stated above, run firmware updates for the controller, backplane, and BIOS (A04 came out not too long ago).

Another thing. Do you have the funds to purchase the extra card for the second channel ? It would go into the very left of the backplane if your looking at it from the top with the cover open. It would be well worth the money having the drive on the separate channel.

Other than that, it looks like you might have a bad backplane (I've been seeing this more often on 2850s and 6850s) or a bad RAID card/RAID key.

Just my thoughts.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the input!

I know that the backplane on the PE2850 is just fine as I can use the onboard SCSI LSI controller (the ROMB) to access SCSI drives just fine.

I ran some more tests the other night with the LSI Logic 320-2 PCI-X card. It seems it will do RAID0 and RAID1 arrays with no problem. I can format ALL of my drives, install Windows 2003 on any of them (singally or in pairs). But, as soon as I try to get a RAID5 going, whether it be 3 drives, 4 drives, 5 drives, or 6 drives it fails. Windows won't be able to format it or install to it.

I am running the latest firmware on the card, have the latest matching driver from LSI's website, and have verified that I'm running the latest BIOS and backplane drivers.

I spoke with LSI's tech support this morning and they confirmed that I likely have a bad 320-2 card. Tech said it was unusual that a card would do RAID0's and RAID1's but not RAID5's. They want me to RMA it, and I might do just that.

Thanks again!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top