Boot problems with raid controller

[klaatu]

I am attempting to build my system and I have the adaptec 2120s raid controller. The 2 hard drives are SCSI Cheetahs 10K u320 and ultra 320 at 73g each. I am using an lvd/se u320 cable. When I get to the boot window, the controller is recognized but not as a scsi controller and the window says 'no logical drive found' and 'bios not installed'. Can you tell me what I am doing wrong? Do I need the scsi 320 controller card? Or maybe I need a raid configuration? I had the 29160N scsi card installed previously but only one u160 hard drive(36g)which died. Should I go back to that system instead?

 

[GhislainG]

Is your LVD/SE cable self-terminated (most are)? What happens when you press Ctrl+A to enter the controller BIOS? You need to make sure that the controller recognizes the hard disks and then make it the first device in the boot list.

 

[klaatu]

Is your LVD/SE cable self-terminated (most are)? What happens when you press Ctrl+A to enter the controller BIOS? You need to make sure that the controller recognizes the hard disks and then make it the first device in the boot list.

Thanks for your response to a computer illiterate. I am shooting for a clean install of windows 2000 Pro. The cable is a ST and the disks are 2nd hand u320 and ultra 320 which I assume are technically equivalent. They are both ST model from Seagate. My concern is do I have to set these disks in an array for the raid config? And what about the creation of logical drives? I haven't accessed Ctrl+A yet but will do it tonight. I am running the i850 chipset on the Intel pentium 4, 400 mhz Award Bios with an ATI X850 256mb graphics card.

 

[GhislainG]

U320 is the short name for Ultra320. What cable are you using? I don't know what you mean by ST cable, but I do know that you need a LVD cable. Can you identify your cable from this site? http://www.computercablesource.com/internal-lvd-scsi-cables-67.html. Which part number is an equivalent of your cable?

Your cable should have a Ultra 320 Scsi Terminator at one end and the controller should be configured for termination or auto termination. If you didn't enter the Adaptec BIOS through CTRL+A, it might not be configured correctly (termination, bootable, etc.). Since it's an older controller, I presume that it's used.

 

[klaatu]

I meant ST to refer to self terminator. The cable says scsi ultra 320 lvd/se with terminator. I went into <Ctrl+A> and this is what came up.


ADAPTEC 2120 S FAMILY CONTROLLER #0

CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION
SCSI CONFIGURATION

First I went to the CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION selection & this menu flashed:
Drives Write Cache Drive Default
Runtime Bios enabled
Auto Failover enabled
Array Background Consistency check disabled
BBS Support enabled
Array Based BBS Support disabled
Physical Drives Display during POST disabled
CD-Rom Boot Support enabled
Removable Media Devices Boot Support enabled
Alarm Control enabled
NVRAM clean
Controller Memory Size 064MB


<F6>Reset to Controller Defaults

Next I entered SCSI CONFIGURATION and this came up.

CHANNEL #0

CONTROLLER SCSI CHANNEL ID 7
SCSI PARITY CHECKING ENABLED
CONTROLLER SCSI CHANNEL TERMINATION AUTO MODE


ADDITIONAL OPTIONS

SCSI DEVICE CONFIGURATION PRESS (ENTER)

-------------------------->


ADAPTEC 2120 S FAMILY CONTROLLER #0 ARRAY CONFIGURATION UTILITY

MAIN MENU

MANAGE ARRAYS
CREATE ARRAY
INITIALIZE DRIVES
RESCAN DRIVES

status bar: DISPLAY, DELETE ARRAYS, SET THE BOOT ARRAY, ASSIGN FAILOVER DRIVES

"then I hit RESCAN DRIVES and got a new status bar prompt:
PREPARE DRIVES FOR CREATING ARRAYS.

that's when I hit the reset button because I was uncertain about continuing the operation.

Since the Bios wouldn't install, no change occurred. But I did make a change in CMOS. I turned the CPU frequency from manual to 1900mhz. The intel processor is 1.9ghz so I figured that wouldn't hurt anything.


Can you advise me about what I need to do now so I can load windows and get my system up and running?

 

[GhislainG]

Physical Drives Display during POST disabled - I would set it to enabled to see the drives

CD-Rom Boot Support enabled - set it to disabled if you don't use a SCSI CD-Rom

"then I hit RESCAN DRIVES and got a new status bar prompt:
PREPARE DRIVES FOR CREATING ARRAYS.

that's when I hit the reset button because I was uncertain about continuing the operation.

If you don't perform that step, then you'll never be able to install the OS or boot from the RAID controller. You need to create the array and then you'll be able to install the OS, etc.

 

[klaatu]

Ok I am not using a scsi cd-rom. When I go into scsi config it recognizes the hard drives. One at #0 the other at #4. Then #7 shows as Array Controller. During bootup it gives the message 'no logical drives found'. Do I need to create logical drive(s)? Do I need to create arrays for both drives or just the boot drive?
Also my dram is rdram but I have a video card that is ddram. Does this represent a non compatibility issue or am I ok? My motherboard specs are for a agp 4x and I am using a Pro agp 256mb 8x card.

 

[GhislainG]

By default, SCSI controllers have ID 7.

You have to create an array that includes both drives. Otherwise why would you use a RAID controller instead of a less expensive and easier to setup SCSI controller?

 

[klaatu]

Yeah, you are right. I think I will revert to the adaptec 29160N controller that was on there when I bought it used.