SmartArray 5304.128 and XW8000 hangs during POST

[roberttco]

I am trying to get an XW8000 and a SmartArray 5304/128 to work together. After the array conreoller starts and you get the "press F2..." message, the system hangs. The only way I can get the system to boot is to fake a hot drive insertion by plugging in the drives after the system has booted. After that I can use the drives as necessary - until the next boot. This is a new installation but the drives were in a different array configuration previously. Do I need to format the drives ? Incidentally, I can not enter the ACU bios utility.

[sandeep_raman]

Hello Robert,

1.Have you installed the card in a pci clot?
2.Do you get ORCA(F8) option after the card is detected?
3.Whats the disk type?

PS: 5300 is an option for servers.

SRH

[roberttco]

I do get the F8 option but at that point, the system is locked up. I have used this same controller in an xw8200 with no problems for about a year. The controller is active in that it will continue to repair a mirror set when the econd drive is attached - you just can't boot the computer.

[sandeep_raman]

Is the controller on the latest firmware?

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/storage/us/download/20193.html

One of the fix:

Improved error handling when a RAID 1 volume is rebuilding.

SRH

[roberttco]

No - and unfirtunately I do not have the utility to install the firmware :( I do not think the fix that you mentioned would nexeccarily help since this really does not have anything to do with RAID 1. I can attach a random disk to the card and it still behaves the same way.

[sandeep_raman]

Not sure if there's a option Clear NVRAM or perhaps Clear CMOS incase you have'nt tried it yet.

Kept forgetting to ask to which controller were the drives connected to before?
Also w/o any disks,are you able to access ORCA(F8) after the card is recognised?

SRH

[roberttco]

There is a jumper location with no jumper that seems a likely candidate. I can connect two drives that were originally connected to the same card (in the xw8200) and, while the card complains about missing drives and lets me continue, it still gets to the F8 prompt and then the system locks up. If there are no drives attached, the system boots normally. If I connect a different drive or drives, the boot process continues until I get the F8 prompt and then it hangs.

[sandeep_raman]

Looks like the 5300 card is dazed while trying to read some information.

Does it freeze @ F8 if you try a formatted or new disk ?

SRH

[roberttco]

Even with formatted drives, the card still hangs the computer. I have aquired another XW8200 so I will be using it's built in RAID (it is faster anyway). Thanks for your help and I hope that someone out there that is having this problem can get some help from this.

[sandeep_raman]

Thanks for updating the post, it would be helpful for others.
If you feel my responses helped/gave a tip, https://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#34

SRH