How to configure basic RAID 1 ? 4

[johnpau80]

I'm trying to configure a RAID 1 server for the first time:
==========================================================

I need to configure RAID 1 with 2 IDE drives each with
60 GB (western digital) I'm using the onboard Promise Technologie on intel mother board SE7500CW2.

Need some info:


1. Do I Need to format the drives before configuring the drive ?

2. Does the drives need to be set in any special jumper
settings ?

3. I wanted to install windows 2000 server ?


Any suggestions as what all need to installed & checked before I configure the RAID ?



--Cathy

 

[Freestone]

Without documentation, I can only provide answers based on my experiences with other Raid controllers. Your best source of information would be the technical document for your motherboard, specifically the onboard Promise controller.

1. Format will most likely occur after defining the mirror set (Raid 1) in the Promise controller BIOS, so though you could format them separately, there is probably no point to it.

2. Each drive more than likely should be set to Master, assuming your controller is dual-interface.

3. The Intel motherboard should have come with a CD from which you will create a Windows 2000 driver diskette for the Promise controller, or if you are fortunate, the diskette was supplied to you. Very early on during the Windows 2000 server install, you'll see a prompt to press F6 to install third-party drivers. Press F6 a few times and you eventually be prompted to feed in the diskette.

Install the drives, and ensure the Promise controller sees them. Then define the mirror set. Once this is done and you have the Windows driver diskette, boot from your CD-ROM drive with the Windows 2000 Server CD installed, press F6 at the appropriate time and feed it the diskette.

You'll probably also have to investigate your system BIOS in order to tell it to boot from the Promise controller mirror set.

Good luck.

 

[johnpau80]

1) Do I have to press F6 while windows 2000 setup even if they
are IDE drives ?


2) I had removed all the jumpers from both the drives.
( as on the wesetern digital drive it shows that
without any jumper its a MASTER )

3) This is how I had connected the drives to the motherboard.

There is a IDE cable with DEVICE 0 and DEVICE 1 connector
I had hooked both the drives to these connectors

4) In the BIOS it shows only one IDE 60GB drive

5) After the BIOS the system comes up with some Promise
Technologies screen and when i hit CTRL + F and enter
into the Promise technologies screen it gives me
1- 6 options , but in middle of the screen it comes
up with this message

" DIsk no found please check the cable and connectors"

I'm sure both the drives are properly connected to the
IDE cable and connected to the mother board.


I did not get this:
"Each drive more than likely should be set to Master, assuming your controller is dual-interface"

What is this dual-interface controller ?


Any help would be appreciated,

--Thanks
Cathy

 

[franklin97355]

Go to the Intel site and get a copy of the motherboard manual as it should tell you how to set this up.

 

[stduc]

Does your motherboard have two 'raidable' IDE channels? i.e. 2 IDE sockets.

Assuming it does, connect one disk to one and one to the other. Both disks should be configured as master. Both disks should be the same capacity. Ensure you put the connector at the 'long' end of the IDE cable into the motherboard and the connector at the other end (the one nearest the 'middle' connector) into the drive. You shouldn't use the connector in the middle of the cable.

Until you RAID controller in BIOS sees both drives and offers to mirror them, there is no point in proceeding further. So, if you can't get past this step, check the drives are working, properly jumpered and that the cables are good and the connectors seated correctly.

One set up in the BIOS install windows and yes - you will need to press F6 at the appropriate time and you will need a floppy disk that contains the correct promise Raid drivers. Once the windows install can see the RAID (as one disk) it will need formatting prior to continuing the install. Windows will treat it as one disk. So can you. The RAID BIOS will take care of the mirroring.

 

[Freestone]

Page 3 of the following link shows the Promise raid connectors. These connectors are the dual-interface (dual-channel) I was referring to. Set both drives to Master, which it sounds like you did, then connect each drive to one of the RAID connectors.

http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/02/97/29714_se7500cw2_brief.pdf

Once the drives are connected as described, proceed as stduc and I have described.

Technical references for this board can be found at:

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/res...board_se7500cw2/technical_reference/index.htm

 

[johnpau80]

Thanks for the replies.


Ok here is what I did based on your postings.

I had gotten 2 IDE cables and hooked them to the 2 disks
one another to the 2 RAID IDE channels.

There are no jumpers to any of the drives ( as MASTER in
western digital IDE drive pictures show that without any
jumpers it will act as MASTER )

When the system normally boots and after the POST screen it comes up with some error which I cannot read as it stays for a second and then goes off.

" some 40-pin cable error there might be some performance
downgrade"

Is there a way I can capture this screen or hold this screen for few more seconds so that I can read it fully.

I guess this might be because of 2 different IDE cables what I'm using to connect the drives to the RAID channels. I had plugged one of the IDE cable from another sytem and connected to this.

Does both the IDE cables what I'm connecting need to be same ( make & anything else else ) ?


When I hit CTRL + F during the promise technology screen it comes up with the PROMISE screen and I select AUTOCONFIG there.


STDUC was saying that my BIOS should recognise the RAID, where is that in BIOS it should read ? It doesn't show any drives in the HARD DRIVE ( primary,slave section ).


I did boot the system with windows 2000 cd and pressed F6 and pointed to the floppy which had the promise drivers for 2000 and after that it came to the setup screen.

Here it shows me 120GB as unformatted and its formatting.

They are 2 x 60GB drives, so at any point during setup it should show me 60GB if the RAID is properly configured ? Isn't it ?


Let me know if I'm doing anything wrong.


---Thanks
Cathy

 

[Freestone]

You should obtain 80-pin IDE cables for your two drives for performance and noise reduction reasons. I don't recommend running with 40-pin cables.

Second, it sounds as if you defined RAID 0 and not RAID 1 since the OS is seeing 120GB. A mirror set capacity is 50% of total drive space since one drive mirrors the other. So in your case, Windows should only be seeing 60GB.

Your BIOS will not see any IDE drives since your drives are no longer connected to the IDE interface.

 

[johnpau80]

Ok, got it, I went to the PROMISE technology screen and changed the setup to SECURITY==> Mirror instead of PERFORMANCE==> Stripe and now it shows me only 60GB.

After that I had started the windows 2000 server setup and there it show me the hard drive space as 60GB.

Then it did format the space and copied the 2000 server setup files and reboot once and after that it goes to blank screen nothing happens. I did reboot couple of times and it just goes to blank screen after the BIOS post screen test.


I was reading some doc in the promise technology, not sure if its the right thing for me:

=====================================================
Solution: There is an option in the FastTrak100 BIOS to make an array bootable. Make sure you set this option to whichever array you want to boot from. There are two ways to make the FastTrak100 be the bootable device. One way is to make sure there are no HDDs on the motherboard controllers. The motherboard will not find a bootable device, and allow the FastTrak100 to boot. The other way is to change the Boot Sequence in your CMOS to boot from SCSI first. Since the system will see the FastTrak100 as a SCSI controller, this will tell the motherboard to ignore it’s own controllers and allow our card to be the boot device. Some motherboards do not allow this, so it may not be an option for you. You MAY also be able to turn the auto-detection off on your motherboard and set all the HDDs in the CMOS to ´´None´´ or ´´Not Installed´´. This is if you have devices (other than HDDs) connected to the motherboard. Again, this last suggestion MAY work. Your motherboard may not allow this type of workaround.

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


So do I have to change something in the BIOS ?

 

[stduc]

yes - but you have to load up the drivers first!

 

[johnpau80]

I had uploaded the drivers while installing windows 2000 by
pressing F6 .

Is this where I have to upload or anywhere else ?

 

[stduc]

Hang on a mo - I'm getting confused here! lol

If you're trying to install a new O/S (effectively) onto a 60GB mirrored RAID 1 array then - yes - you appear to be doing the right things - but its failing. Am I right?

A couple of things come to mind.

1. - you really should be using 80 pin IDE cables, not 40.

2. - You need your BIOS boot sequence to be HD array 1 (or something similar) then CDROM.

You install windows. You do the F6 thing and ensure it finds & installs the correct RAID drivers.

You then opt to format the hard drive as bootable. - you can partition at this point. As far as windows is concerned you have one 60GB disk - the fact it is mirrored or striped (RAID 1 or RAID 0) is totally hidden from windows by the RAID BIOS and the RAID drivers.

Then - you finally let the install procedure continue.

If you suspect that the windows install is getting confused because there is something on the disks then you can try downloading the wd drive utility and zero filling the disks to initialize them as new unformatted disks. Then you have a known starting point.

N.B.

On boot up you should see the promise RAID BIOS take over after the normal BIOS and report something like.

Detecting devices.......
RAID 1 (security mirror) .... 60GB detected.

enter (xxx) to configure RAID

The screen should pause for a few seconds & continue to boot windows if you don't do xxx

xxx is where you get into the RAID BIOS utility and can setup either a RAID 0 (2 disks) RAID 1 (2 disks) or RAID 5 (3 disks or more) or re-build a broken RAID 1 or RAID 5.

If at a future date with RAID 1 a disk fails - the good disk will carry on. The BIOS will report the failure and offer to re-build the RAID after you have fixed the problem (replaced the disk?)

I suggest - when you have got your RAID 1 working, and windows installed you take some time out to experiment.

Shut down. Remove power from 1 drive. re-boot. Observe what happens.

Shut down. Re-attach the power to that drive. re-boot. observe what happens and document the steps you take to re-build the array.

The theory is - a disk can fail and you can continue working until you choose to shut down, replace the disk and re-build the array.

You will not need to re-install - nor should you loose so much as a single bit of your data!

 

[Freestone]

I quickly scanned the technical doc for your board on Intel's site and didn't see an option in BIOS to enable booting from the Promise controller.

I also looked at the following doc:

http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/cs-010729.htm

and step 6, in particular steps 6.7 & 6.8 which "will enable you to choose which array number will be your boot array." may be what you need to do to enable booting from your mirror set.

It sounds as if you supplied Windows 2000 with the correct driver. Now it's a matter of getting your system to boot from the mirror set.

I still highly recommend your obtain two 80-conductor IDE cables for your drives.

 

[johnpau80]

Hi stduc / Freestone,


This is what I have done so far and still struck, correct me and help me :


1. Removed any Jumpers which are on my 2 Western digital
hard drives WD600BB model ( 60GB x 2 ) IDE
drives.

2. Got 2 new 80-pin IDE coductor IDE cables.

3. Connected 1st 80-pin IDE cable from PRIMARY RAID
controller from the mother board to the 1st HARD drive

4. Connected 2nd 80-pin IDE cable from SECONDARY RAID
controller from the mother board to the 2nd HARD drive

5. Restarted my machine and after the regular BIOS went
into the Promise technology screen to configure RAID
and I had select the SECURITY one and it said the RAID 1

6. Checked the 3 option and it said the ARRAY 1 is set to
bootable . ( there is a " * " sign next to Array 1)

7. Rebooted the machine and when to BIOS and checked the
boot sequence order and its set to this:

+Hard Drive
! Bootable add-in
! Array FX 1

CDROM
Floppy drive
Removable hard drive

8. Rebooted the machine and started the windows 2000 setup
and pressed F6 to add the Promise technology 100 fast
track drivers for windows 2000.

9. It was showing up FREESPACE as 60GB and I had asked it
to format with NTFS and create a partition C:\ drive

10. It formatted and then copied the windows 2000 setup
files and then try to reboot the machine.


Its trying to boot from the Hard disk and it gives me
this error.

"NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND"


Not sure if my system is not able to boot from the RAID
configured hard drive.


Any help !!!


--Thanks
Cathy

 

[Freestone]

I'm not sure if either the Bootable add-in or the Array FX 1 is the Promise Controller, nor am I sure why there is an exclamation point in front of them, but try moving one then the other to the top of the list and see if the system will boot.

Your list is very complete and you've done all the necessary steps as far as getting Windows 2000 installed on the RAID array. As I said earlier, it's a matter of getting your system to boot from thw RAID array.

 

[Freestone]

I guess for completeness sake, look in BIOS, Advanced menu, On Board Device submenu, and ensure Onboard RAID is enabled. I'm betting it is.

Also in the Advanced menu, there is a PCI Configuration Submenu, which contains a Onboard RAID entry. This "Configures the onboard RAID option ROM area", which looks as if it is by default Enabled.

I'm looking at the manual at ftp://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/se7500cw2/tps.pdf

Also, the latest BIOS Release is 1.28 (BIOS P17). What level is your system at?

 

[johnpau80]

Freestone,

Here are the answers for your questions:

1) Checked the BIOS, Advanced menu, On Board Device submenu,
Onboard RAID is enabled.

2) In Advanced menu, there is a PCI Configuration Submenu, which contains a Onboard RAID entry. This "Configures the onboard RAID option ROM area", it is Enabled.

3) PhoenixBIOS 1.28 (release date 05/22/2003)

4) Fasttrak100 (tm) BIOS version 2.30.0140.4

 

[johnpau80]

Yahooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It worked finally.


This is what I had to do to make it work.

Instead of using two seperate 80-pin cable to these 2 drives.

What I did is just use one 80-pin cable and plugged into
the MASTER and SLAVE connectors to the drives.

And now it finally works, I did test by experimenting by
unplugging one drive at a time.


Thanks a ton to FREESTONE and STDUC.

 

[Freestone]

I'm glad you finally got it to work though the original configuration should've worked too.

 

[cmefix]

Just to let you know I was also using 2 60g Western Digital hard drives on a raid 1 for a side job of mine and every 4 to 6 months the raid would go down. I would rebuild the drive everything would seem fine but like clockwork it would happen again. I found out that Western Digital hard drives are made to goto sleep after a period of time that no data is being writen to the drives. This would cause the raid to fail looking like a bad hard drive to the raid controller. This is a Western Digital thing and is written into the bios of the hard drives.

There is a fix for this from Western Digital you make a bootable disk and run a utility that removes this feature from the hard drive. Both hard drives need to be done and it will only do it when the hard drive is in the raid ide 1 slot so just switch your hard drives around and do it twice.

This solved my troubles and I never had a raid failure again from those hard drives. And as a side note I now only use Maxtor hard drives in a raid set up.