ML370 hangs in boot process when USB drive plugged in

[Neal Bowman]

This USB device probably has an IDE interface inside the enclosure, and is acting as an IDE hard drive, regardless of the physical connection. That means that it is going to attempt boot before any SCSI device ROMs have a chance to initialize. I am sure if you wait long enough, you will see message stating system drive not found, etc.

[Phillip Williams_2]

Gentlemen:

The Maxtor Knowledge base comes up with this when you search on 3000LE & Boot
===========
PC will not boot while Personal Storage drive is connected to system.

Question
The system will not boot with the Personal Storage device connected to the system.

Answer
This symptom may occur when the operating system is not able to properly shut down the drive when Windows is shutting down. Therefore, the system hangs when attempting to restart since the device was not shut down properly. There are several ways to get around this issue:



Cycle the power to the Maxtor Personal Storage drive prior to restarting.
Once your computer has been shut down, disconnect the power to the drive to clear out its buffer. Then plug the power to the drive back in before turning on the system. Windows should then load and the drive should be detected properly.


Disconnect the drive before restarting Windows.
When Windows is shutdown you can either disconnect the power or 1394/USB cable from the drive. Power the system and wait until Windows has been loaded. Reconnect the drive to the system when the operating system is running and the drive should be detected immediately.


Get latest updates from Microsoft





================

Sounds like there may be an issue at the Maxtor end....

Hope that helps

Eric

[Dan Mahoney]

Yes, it is good to have that info. Unfortunately it doesn't offer any help in this situation - the machine in question is going to be installed in a colocation site that is normally unmanned. Bummer.

I did speak with tech support at Compaq. THey informed me that they support the use of HIDs plugged into the USB ports (keyboard, mouse), not mass storage devices. I then asked if I could plug a 3rd-party USB PCI card into the machine and get access to a USB mass storage device that way. The answer to that is that no 3rd-party USB cards are supported.

I guess the bottom line is that I won't be using a USB hard drive on this machine.

My next task is to figure out if internal IDE hard drives are supported. So far I've only seen mention of connecting the CDROM drive to the IDE port, but since I need a high-capacity short-term storage mechanism, I'm thing a high-capacity IDE drive might fit the bill quite nicely.

[Seth Parker]

Dan,

I was just looking on the update site and a newer BIOS for the ML370 G3 just came out on 12/16/03. One of the things it addresses is "A potential hang that could occur with USB devices attached during POST".

Maybe they fixed it...

Regards,
Seth

[Dan Mahoney]

Wow! I'll check that out - thanks for the pointer! I doubt I would have noticed that. I'll report on my success (or lack therof) later today.

[Sunil Jerath]

Hello Dan,
Here is the link to download the latest BIOS and this should take care of your server's USB issue.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/19820.html

Regards,

[Dan Mahoney]

That did it! The new BIOS fixes the problem!

At last, I have USB storage on my ML370. Many, many thanks to all who helped, but especially to the last two who pointed me to the new BIOS release.