SCSI Boot Woes

S

STL

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I am building a system with two Fujitsu MAS3735NP drives in RAID-1 on an Adaptec 29320-R. The drives are on the same cable, and that cable is attached to channel B - that's the connector closest to the bracket. The terminator is past the drives, not past the card. The cable has no bent pins.

I have flashed the card to BIOS 4.30.0. Channel A is also set to HostRAID, though no drives are on it.

There is a SATA RAID-5 array in the system, but XP can't see it yet because I haven't given it the proper drivers. No other hard drives are connected. Four opticals are on IDE.

When installing XP, I push F6 to load in Adaptec's most recent HostRAID drivers, 1.02.63. I can then make a partition on the RAID-1 array and install XP there. When installation finishes and the machine reboots, I take out the CD and floppy, and I get the following message eventually:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk.
Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

Does anyone know how I can fix this and boot from SCSI? The last time I built a computer, I used a single X15-36LP on a 29160N, and XP just magically worked (no additional drivers ever installed).

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314477 #2 did not help - it just made a near-duplicate entry in the boot.ini.

Note that if I load in the HostRAID drivers and go into the Recovery Console, I can access C: (the RAID-1 array) just fine.
 
WinXP actually does not like scsi. a problem I found out. I have also, a Fujitsu MAS series 18GB 15K RPM hd. and a Tekram DC390U controller. It worked the first time i installed windows. now it wont install windows at alll. tried it on win2k, works fine. sometimes it will load, sometimes it wont. good luck. :)
 
[Philip]
> Is the terminator installed on the very end of the cable?

Correct. (It came that way).

It goes, adapter, couple of unused connectors, drive, drive, terminator.

[DeepFreeze]
> WinXP actually does not like scsi.

My current computer Northwood boots XP from a Seagate Cheetah X15-36LP on an Adaptec 29160N. Worked like a charm; never had to install any kind of drivers.
 
I tried turning off HostRAID. XP Setup can't see the drives.

Still stumped....
 
Are you using a bootable XP cd to install? So this error occurs right after the first portion of the setup (the blue screen part) right? Are you leaving the floppy disk with the drivers in the drive until the very end of the setup?
 
[aug1516]
> Are you using a bootable XP cd to install?

Correct.

> So this error occurs right after the first portion of the
> setup (the blue screen part) right?

Correct.

> Are you leaving the floppy disk with the drivers in the drive
> until the very end of the setup?

Correct. When the first phase of setup completes, I eject the diskette and the system reboots. Then the error occurs.
 
When the Adaptec bious loads. Does it show both drives?

Do the drives have different ID's?

Does one of the drives have ID #7 ? This ID is normaly held for the channel the drives are hooked to. If one of the drives is taking it. It might play games with your controller card.

I have had XP on my computer for over 2 years now. I have no complaints about XP and SCSI. I also have my daughters computer running XP on SCSI for about the same amount of time.
 
[Philip]
> When the Adaptec bious loads. Does it show both drives?

It shows the array as Optimal.

> Do the drives have different ID's?

ID 0 and ID 1.

> Does one of the drives have ID #7 ?

No. That's the host adapter's ID.
 
Which drivers are you loading during the install? I would try both the newest on Adaptecs website 1.02.63, the slightly older 1.02 drivers and the original 1.01 ones. Have you tried all three of these already? I have often had good luck using older SCSI drivers during that initial install compared to the newer ones. Of course I have never seen this problem before so this may not do a thing.
 
[aug1516]
> Which drivers are you loading during the install?

Latest 1.02.63. As I flashed the BIOS to 4.30.0, I don't know if I should use earlier drivers.
 
If I provide SATA RAID-5 drivers as well as SCSI RAID-1 drivers, I can put a system partition on the SATA RAID-5 array and the boot partition on the SCSI RAID-1 array.

I do not want to have to resort to this solution. If I did, would it be possible to swap SATA RAID-5 arrays in the future and copy the necessary files over?

Could the problem be caused by having the SATA RAID-5 array in the system to begin with, even when I do not provide its drivers to XP? Would removing the card until Windows is fully installed allow me to put both the system and boot partitions on the SCSI RAID-1 array?

Could the problem be that the SATA RAID-5 card is physically above (closer to the AGP card) the SCSI RAID-1 card? In my current system, my extra IDE controller card is below the SCSI card, which was first in the system.
 
Thank you all, for your help during this frustrating time.

The apparent solution is to put the SCSI RAID card /topmost/. My cards used to go:

AGP 5950 Ultra
PCI 1 empty (for dual-height video cards in the future)
PCI 2 8506-8 SATA RAID
PCI 3 29320-R SCSI RAID
PCI 4 Audigy 2 ZS
PCI 5 empty (USB 2.0/FireWire bracket)

I swapped the SATA RAID and SCSI RAID cards so that the SCSI RAID is on top, and it looks like I can now put both the system partition and the boot partition on the SCSI RAID array.
 
Glad you got it. I was going to ask about card position next. I don't like throwing to many questions out at once.
 
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