Machine wont boot when array is setup

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 10:43

Specs:
Windows 2003 Enterprise
AMD Athlon 2Ghz
1Gb Corsair ram
Gigabyte 7N400 motherboard
Adaptec AAR-2410SA 64Mb
2x Maxtor 500Gb SATA drives (Stripe 0)
1x 80Gb IDE drive with O/S installed

I have been having problems trying to setup a sata array on my system. On boot I login to the bios of the adaptec card and setup my array by adding both drives. The bios says the array is created and so I reboot the system but on boot it only gets to just before the windows boot screen and haults. There is no activity from my IDE drive that has the o/s installed and the system just sits there. But if I login to the adaptec bios and delete the array the system boots fine.

I can’t understand what the problem is, can anyone help me out?

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 11:13

I am sure the adaptec card has the correct drivers as it is working properly in windows with no errors againt it in the device manager. The drivers installed fine and all went smoothly when i did install the card in windows.

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 15:22

any RAID experts?

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 15:44

Yeah I checked the boot order in the mobo bios and its set to

First Boot Device: HDD0

and I have disabled the second and third boot devices. So going by that it should boot from the IDE drive first.

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 16:59

Yeah in the adaptec bios there is an option to set the array as the first boo device by pressing Ctrl and S or something. But I just left that as I want my first booit device to be the IDE drive.

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 19:35

Ok small update...

I noticed the 2 drives were connected to ports 3 & 4 so I re connected them to ports 1 & 2 and now the machine boots to windows

On boot the array is detected and shows up as being optimal which is good but when I get to windows I dont see the drive

DezUk · 8 Jul 2008 at 21:02

Ok I did what you said and manged to get the array up and running. But I didnt think this is how it would be setup, the way it is just now gives me the impression is aided by software. I thought using the adaptec card it would be fully hardware built. For instance when setting up the array in the adaptec bios i expected to see a "Build Array" feature that would take a while to build it.

I have also found an adpatec storgae manager browser edition which I have seen working before on another system. This allows you to build an array and monitor its status etc. Again I cant get this working

Or have I got it all wrong is this it working properly?

DezUk · 9 Jul 2008 at 00:21

Delvis said:
And did you get your software from the following link: http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/downlo...=AAR-2410SA&dn=Adaptec+Serial+ATA+RAID+2410SA

yeah that's where I downloaded the software from

I have noticed the adapted bios is a bit out of date so I'll try updating that. Its just a pain it needs to be done with old floppies

Btw I'm running v2.12 of the storage manager on it says not controller found even though its working fine in device manager. Hopefully the bios update will fix it.