SATA external RAID 1 in ML330 G3...won't boot if drives turned on

[Len Ralph]

ML330 w/ Windows2003 Server, 120 Gig Raid 0 onboard EIDE boot drive system.
Added Startech SATA controller to add 2 external 300G SATA drives for more storage configured as RAID 1. Works fine in Bios, created Raid 1 set, but OS wont' boot when drives are turned on. Turn off drives and the system boots up. Try to boot with them turned on and it says OS not found.
Used F9 to check boot device priority and the SATA controller is number 3 and the EIDE RAID 0 set ( the actual boot device ) is set at Number 1.

Weird. Anyone have a solution or suggestion?

[Bruno Mesquita_1]

If possible try to use the SATA controller as the BOOT device.

In some buses the SATA controller is expected to be the boot device. If i'm not wrong the SATA drive is always master.

Regards.

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi Len,

The Startech controller will have INT13 support enabled and will probably be seen in the PCI scan before the embedded disk controller, hence your problem. You need to go into the Startech BIOS and disable INT13 support.

This will still allow any attached and configured riad disks to be seen as additional storage to the operating system but won't let the system try to boot from it. You are getting the "OS not found" error because it is assuming that the raid set you have created is the primary disk. Disabling INT13 support should sort this out for you.

I hope this helps.

Brian

[Len Ralph]

Brian,

Thanks for the great suggestion, which I thought was going to do it, until I found out that there is no option in the Startech Bios to disable Int 13.

The ML 330 Bios does have an option to choose which will be the boot device however.. and it lists my Startech as number 3 on the list.

It seems odd that it would list the Startech as number three, yet bypass the embedded controller by default.