ML 570 will not boot - non-system disk or disk error

[Jac1]

Hi,

I received an old Proliant ML570 and want to start it up. (It has 5 Ultra2 scsi harddisks in it).

I am not a specialist in hardware.

The servers starts (in the machine alle leds are green) but on the 5 harddisks when put on the power you see for all the disks the green  ligths and immediately all ligths are gone .

Machine boots and says

Processor 1 initialized ....

Processor 2 initialized ...

Scanning for SCSI devices ...

SCSI controler ....

Non-System disk or disk error

and stops....

Someone any idea what could be the problem?

I opened already yhe machine but thats it - how can I check a good connection with the hard disks???

Thanks

[waaronb]

It sounds like you might have a first or second gen model if you're talking about Ultra2 SCSI drives... that should be interesting but fun to try out if you wanted to see how an old server runs.

My guess is the array controller doesn't have any arrays configured for those drives. On bootup, the drives will light up to check their status, but if they aren't part of an array, the lights will go off eventually.

There should be an option during boot to configure the array... I think the G1/G2 models had something like the Smart Array 4i or something but it's been a while.

You could also try booting off the Smartstart CD (you can find the old versions of that on the HP FTP site). That has some options there for configuring arrays and installing an OS along with whatever drivers and software. I doubt the new SPP startup disc supports a server that old, so stick with the Smartstart CD.

Here's a link to the latest x86 version of the Smartstart CD:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/cd/p1040463476/v71251/smartstart-8.70B-0-x86.zip

And for x64:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/cd/p1760479716/v71252/smartstart-8.70B-0-x64.zip

It might not even have a built in array controller in which case it's probably just showing that error because there's nothing to boot from... boot from a CD to install whatever Windows or Linux or something and go from there.

If the OS install can't see any drives either, come back and give more info. :)