ML110 G2 and HighPoint 2320 SATAII controller not working

[Henrik B. Wieder]

Hi guyes

I have just purchased a HighPoint 2320 SATA II and 6 x DiamondMax 10 250 GB SATA II disks. I was hoping that I could install it in my ML 110 G2, but no.

Windows is running from local SATA connector.
Installation of card is no problem.

When I create a RAID 5 with 4xdisks, no problem. Formating the disks, no problems.

Reboot, and the server wont boot up again.
Curser is just blinking up in the left corner.

The only way to get the server to boot, is deleting the array, powe off, and power on again. Somtime I have to remove the card, and boot without it once.

I have tryed all the combinations I can think of. I don't have another computer with a PCI Express 4 slot.

Please help

Henrik B. Wieder

[Brian_Murdoch]

Henrik,

Go into your Highpoint controller setup and disable the BIOS (Int 13) if possible so that it isn't seen as a bootable controller.
I assume you only want the additional storage to be seen in the operating system but not used for boot purposes.

The Highpoint controller may be being scanned before the embedded controller in the PCI bus scan and placed first in the boot sequence. Make sure the BOOT ORDER in the BIOS (Press F9 after POST) is correct but you may still get this problem even with the order set correctly.

I hope this helps.

Brian

[Henrik B. Wieder]

Hi Brian

I dont have the option on the RAID controller, I did try do tisable it from the Boot order, nu luck.

One odd thing, when i erased the JOBD (1 disk) i whent into legacy mode, and windows did boot.

So I am back to square one, again.

Any other hints would be noce, before "deleting" my ML 110.
btw. BIOS is latest 1.14S.

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi Henrik,

When I look at the specification for the ML110G2 PCI slots it states that these have seperate buses. If you move the card to different PCI slots it might scan the card after the embedded controller and avoid your problem.

In other words if you can find that the Highpoint card is scanned on the PCI bus in one of the PCI slots after the embedded controller, you should not have the problem as the embedded controller will always be the first boot device.

Can you test this please if you haven't already done so.

Regards,

Brian

[Henrik B. Wieder]

Hi Brian

The problem is that it uses PCI Express X4. I had a RockedRAID 454 (PCI) before ant I got no problems with taht, other then speed :-).

[Brian_Murdoch · Accepted solution]

Henrik,

Here is my last effort which I think may work. On the Highpoint web site, the 2320 controller BIOS is listed along with the user guide.

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr2320.htm

If you download the BIOS User Guide, it shows you that additional parameters can be changed using the BIOS update utility (hptflash.exe). Among these paramaters which can be changed is the INT13 support. This is set to Enabled by defualt but it can be disabled. This would stop the controller assigning the first array as bootable.

See the guide here.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/manuals/Updating_BIOS.pdf

If you disable the INT13 function it should be OK I hope.

Regards,

Brian

[Henrik B. Wieder]

Hi Brian

I bow infront of you :-). It looks like that the int 13 was the thing. Tryed with RAID 0, and it worked. Now I am trying the production enviroment 1 TB RAID 5. It will take 60 min befor finish.

So far thank you Brian.

Henrik B. Wieder

[Brian_Murdoch]

Excellent !!!

Thanks for the points Henrik.

Best regards,

Brian