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Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

 
John Hattersley
Occasional Advisor

ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

I have my main server as an ML330 Gen 3 (originally a 317817-002) upgraded to have 2 Gig of RAM and a Raid 1 configured pair of 200 Gig WD ATA133 drives running Windows Server 2003. BIOS was updated per SoftPaq release to handle >120G drives. The server has had severe reliability issues with this combination. Tried to replace the on motherboard RAID function with RocketRaid card specifically for ATA133 drive - would fail to boot from drives on that board! Any ideas to get this server back to reliable?
12 REPLIES 12
Kedd Guyton
Respected Contributor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

Is the HighPoint RocketRAID's BIOS enabled? Please note that some of the RocketRAID's need to be re-flashed with the BIOS to reconfigure boot options. Weird, but true.

Is the RocketRAID selected as the boot device for the C: Drive / hard disk in the system BIOS?

Is it attempting to boot from the RocketRAID, and if so, is Windows failing to start?
John Hattersley
Occasional Advisor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

Your suggestion is an interesting challenge. To boot with the RocketRaid board, loading it's bios, makes the PC unable to read the Floppy Disk, but skipping the loading of the RocketRaid Bios makes it unable to "see" the board and therefore unable to re-flash the board! Usually you reflash the Bios from a floppy!
I even tried to boot with the RocketRaid Bios loading and put the data files on a hard drive connected to the HP Raid Controller - and it could not "see" any product to upgrade when I DID run the RocketRaid Bios flash routine!

I DO believe that you are right that you need to do the BIOS upgrade - but HOW! - maybe do it in a different PC?
Kedd Guyton
Respected Contributor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

Make a bootable DOS floppy that contains the RocketRAID firmware flash file and flash utility (load.exe?). Use a CD burning program to make a bootable CD from a bootable floppy.
John Hattersley
Occasional Advisor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

Well - that was an interesting effort! I made the bootable CD - but the Proliant STILL would NEVER boot from the CD either! SO ... I had to move the RocketRaid 133 card over to an old PC - and there I WAS able to boot from both CD and Floppy! I updated the BIOS of the RAID board and then moved the board and drives back over to the Proliant server. I had and older RAID pair of drives plugged into the board and if the boot order is set to the Raid HDD boot as 1st device - all APPEARS to be great..... I can read both the floppy and the CD (I of course disabled the original on-board RAID as a bootable device). . . BUT what my ORIGINAL issue (the reason I had to update the Bios Firmware) was so that I could, if there was a Hard Disk issue, I wanted to boot from Floppy or at least a bootable CD. I STILL cannot boot from the Floppy - BUT - I CAN from a bootable CD - I may just go with this - but if I could get the floppy bootable too - that would be the very best! - Any more ideas are always appreciated!
Kedd Guyton
Respected Contributor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

The RocketRAID cards can be troublesome to first install, but after that they're a good, inexpensive performer.

If the RocketRAID is not installed, is it possible to boot from a bootable floppy?

Sorry for my unfamiliarity with the ML330 G3, but is your floppy drive connected to a true floppy port, or is it a USB floppy drive?
John Hattersley
Occasional Advisor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

Yes - this Server has always worked fine with the floppy booting and the floppy IS available after the Windows server 2000 boots up fully - just cannot boot when the card is installed - without - it boots fine with the floppy. A slight correction here: I currently have it try CD-ROM as first boot device then the floppy as second then the Raid-HDD. When I DO have the RocketRaid board installed and have a floppy in the floppy drive - I get a "invalid system disk" error. When I remove the floppy and retry the booting - then I get a "602 - diskette boot record error" and in BOTH cases the server stops trying to boot up - if I eliminate the floppy from the boot sequence then the server starts up fine! Another interesting fact is that I do NOT even get the "press F10 to configure system" prompt if there is NO floppy in the drive whereas I DO get that prompt just before it tries the floppy. Thanks again!
Kedd Guyton
Respected Contributor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

If the floppy drive is a USB model, you may have settings in the RBSU/BIOS to add support for legacy devices on USB or something similar. I'm wondering if that may help with the floppy boot issue.
John Hattersley
Occasional Advisor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

The Floppy is a standard Floppy drive - NOT USB. That is what is so surprising and frustrating.
Kedd Guyton
Respected Contributor

Re: ML330 G3 317817-002 upgraded - Raid failure

I'm going to make a suggestion that even I wouldn't want to bother trying. You could attempt to manually assign the IRQ's in the BIOS/RBSU...assuming it is even an IRQ issue.

The only other thing that occurs to me is you could clear NVRAM in the BIOS/RBSU to attempt to force the BIOS into reassigning resources.