nuhawk

If you guys are anything like I am, you work on all your machines with the same vengance. I have a computer question so if any of you have been out there I would appreciate your input.

My fax server failed last week with a "invalid system disk" error message. This computer was running twin 120 gig Maxtors and are prob about 3 years old. The motherboard supports sata raid 0 so that was the way I had it set up. Rocket fast but kind of soft on recovery and error checking.

After failing to boot the disk controller recog'd the disks but couldn't boot from them. I replaced the disks with new ones today and now the motherboard says it can't find any harddrives to load the new OS. I have switched power connectors, reloaded drivers for the Raid controller and it still can't find the disks.

Any ideas?

superbling

Sorry for the "fundamentals" reply but check your cable connections (master/slave) and the jumper settings. BTDT

nuhawk

Yeah, I know Doug, no good news from here on that one. I think the controller on the mb might have given up. This unit sits up in retail and takes all the fine road grit off the parking lot and the street. I think as the hd failed (?) it drove the controller to the point of extinction or the controller outright failed and it all workrd upstream from there.

It seems strange to me that it would identify the disks, report their serial numbers and size and not boot the OS.

Stranger still that when new disks are installed it can't find them at all.

The box is loaded with goodies - all of which can be moved to a new K7 mb and the disks (old ones and new ones) could be moved to the new k8 server that I'm about to build.

Like you, I hate to overlook anything stupid but this smells like serious fish.

Still baffled but it is not a critical machine to the operation and tomorrow instead of wasting any more time on it, I will simply move the fax/modem into a substitute machine and decommission the failed unit.

Thanks for your comments.

Gregw

I haven't messed with RAIDS all that much, but there was a setup program right at boot up that I had to go into to choose the drives for the RAID. Right around the time you would enter the BIOS a line tells you to press a button to enter the config program. There you select the drives and what type of RAID they will be used for.

RickB

I am thinking the raid controller is the problem as well but check the raid program like GregW said as well. You should be able to download the Maxtor powermax utility to do diagnostics on the hard drives - it should be on their website - if not I can email it to you, pm me if you need it.

nuhawk

Thanks, guys! I loads the utility normally then when you go into it to config the array, it states no disks present Arrg!