Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Hi All, First post on here! Im having issues with a dell poweredge 1950 Installed a SATA hard drive, trying to install win server 2003 r2. Not picking up the hard drives?.... tried all dell help forums.... tried all types of RAID drivers... still no joy! can anyone help# im at the end of my tether here and...and YES im working over the weekend!
featured_spectre Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Does the bios recognise it as the primary drive? 1
Steve21 Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 (edited) I may be missing the obvious, but did you actually plug it into a sata port, or to a raid card? I thought on most of the older dells the sata port was only for optical drives. You'd need to use the raid card (SAS/Perc etc) to get the actual drives, and thus may be bios based raid etc setup on already. (Which some cards won't work without multiple drives in already, if it's expecting a raid setup). Steve Edited December 1, 2012 by Steve21 1
Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Author Posted December 1, 2012 existing hard drive SCSI 2 x 73gb new hard drive SATA x 2 I have tried combination of 1 and 2. Bios is seeing the hard drives. ermmm SYNACK... i dont understand your question?!.... now when I have re-inserted orginal SCSI hard drives and tried to install os i cant see the hdd's?... although system boots up to the windows login screen?
SYNACK Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 (edited) I'm going to assume that it is the optional extra PERC RAID card as opposed to the on the motherboard SATA ports. Have you gone into the RAID BIOS or RAID configuration and set up the drives as a mirror or stripe. Until you do this the RAID card may not offer them as avalible storage to the OS. Edited December 1, 2012 by SYNACK 1
Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Author Posted December 1, 2012 SYNACk...im sure i tried that at 4am?.. lol:sleep: but will try it again
Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Author Posted December 1, 2012 configured raid - still cant see hard drive(s) used a usb floppy drive to load raid controller driver - still no luck disconnected the backpane (which links into the onboard raid card) - still cant see hard drives re-connected original drives SCSI (SAS) still cant see these hard drives Im going now to fetch my sledgehammer!
Guest Guest Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Download a copy of server 2008/2012. Can you see the HD now? If so you know its a driver issue.
SYNACK Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 eep, this is 2003, had not seen that. Depending on the drivers you may even need to integrate them into the install media to get it to pick them up. Do you have/can you get access to the 'smartstart' (that's what HP calls it) cd media which prestages stuff like drivers and partitions beforehand, it would probably be with the original CD/DVD tools that came with the CD. It may also be downloadable from dell Maybe this: Drivers and Downloads | Dell [united States] or Drivers and Downloads | Dell [united States] 1
twin--turbo Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Test with Suse or Debian Linux to see if it can see the drive and confirm driver issue. Rob
Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Author Posted December 1, 2012 I have just inserted a win server 2008 r2 disk, enabled the ATA config in the bios and can see the new 500 gb sata hdd, But i dont want to install 2008 r2 SYNACK - I will try your solution Had others issues earlier.... Updated all following bios / firmware, after RAID started displaying the hard drives as foreign. Dell Poweredge 1950 with Perc 5i keeps losing raid config -> "Foreign Configuration Found" - Server Fault
Get2theChoppa Posted December 1, 2012 Author Posted December 1, 2012 Right, Thank you all for taking time to view my post! Major thanks to SYNACK!... the solution worked Would send you all a box of chocies and a xmas card!... but since we r all anon... I will eat them on your behalf! and donate some money to my local salvation army branch! and hopefully I dont get any more of these technical problems!
TheScarfedOne Posted December 1, 2012 Posted December 1, 2012 Dell Servers usually have a Resource CD or DVD which helps to install the server OS. It puts all the drivers in etc so that your Windows installation media can then actually start. Well worth grabbing one of these...usually an iso from the support section of Dells website, search the tag number for your server and it will give you the available options.
gengads Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 Right, Thank you all for taking time to view my post! Major thanks to SYNACK!... the solution worked Would send you all a box of chocies and a xmas card!... but since we r all anon... I will eat them on your behalf! and donate some money to my local salvation army branch! and hopefully I dont get any more of these technical problems! Hi dear friend I'm glad I came to this link, I am having the same issue as well could you please very kindly advice me how did you solve this problem, I have seen SYNACK reply and I have downloaded the first software and connect it through DRAC network card going through media and then select ISO image, which I have downloaded from Dell it seems like is not connecting, Please advice how did you over come this problem and what steps did you follow, I got the same server as you do Dell Poweredge 1950 quad core 16G ram 3,5 SATA 2 x 500 total 930, 2 ghz, I been having a lot of problem mounting my Vmware, it complain about the HDD not available. Many Thanks in advance
Duke Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 (edited) Hi dear friend I'm glad I came to this link, I am having the same issue as well could you please very kindly advice me how did you solve this problem, I have seen SYNACK reply and I have downloaded the first software and connect it through DRAC network card going through media and then select ISO image, which I have downloaded from Dell it seems like is not connecting, Please advice how did you over come this problem and what steps did you follow, I got the same server as you do Dell Poweredge 1950 quad core 16G ram 3,5 SATA 2 x 500 total 930, 2 ghz, I been having a lot of problem mounting my Vmware, it complain about the HDD not available. Many Thanks in advance Could you clarify - do you mean you're trying to install VMware on this server? If so, are you using the 'vanilla' VMware ESXi image, or are you using the customised Dell VMware image? If you haven't tried the latter then give it a go - it contains drivers, etc. which have been slipstreamed into the VMware ESXi installer. This should/may allow ESXi to see your hard drives and/or RAID card and install. Edited February 2, 2013 by Duke
gengads Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 Could you clarify - do you mean you're trying to install VMware on this server? If so, are you using the 'vanilla' VMware ESXi image, or are you using the customised Dell VMware image? If you haven't tried the latter then give it a go - it contains drivers, etc. which have been slipstreamed into the VMware ESXi installer. This should/may allow ESXi to see your hard drives and/or RAID card and install. I'm installing Vmware which I have downloaded from vmware web site it's 4.1 I believe it's full version trail one. I am not able to see my hard disk and the installation fails and the error message is unable to see hard disk. If I go raid controller screen it shows Raid-0 is states is offline and the virtual disk 0 show up red. Please advice your what you think Many Thanks
Duke Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 (edited) I'm installing Vmware which I have downloaded from vmware web site it's 4.1 I believe it's full version trail one. I am not able to see my hard disk and the installation fails and the error message is unable to see hard disk. If I go raid controller screen it shows Raid-0 is states is offline and the virtual disk 0 show up red. Okay, first we need to get your RAID array sorted. Do you have any data that you need on the drives at the moment? If not, then go into the RAID controller BIOS, remove the RAID 0 configuration, and create a new RAID array. I would recommend you use RAID 1 rather than RAID 0, as RAID 1 will be more reliable and ESXi doesn't need the performance of RAID 0 (unless you were also planning to store virtual machines on this array?) Once the array is showing as healthy, you need to download the Dell customised VMware installer: To download the Dell customized VMware ESXi 4.x and 5.0 images, go to Dell support website (Go to Welcome to Small Business Support -> Select ‘Support for Enterprise IT’ -> Go to ‘Drivers and Downloads’-> ’Enter Service tag’ or select ‘Choose from a list of all Dell products’ option -> Select ‘Servers, Storage, & Networking’ option -> Select ‘PowerEdge’ -> Select the system as per your configuration -> Once the system is selected, Select the ‘Operating System’ as ESXi 4.x or ESXi 5.0 as per your requirement -> Click ‘Enterprise Solutions’ sub tab -> The ISO image is listed there ). The Dell customized VMware ESXi 4.x and Dell Customized VMware ESXi 5.0 images are also available @ VMware Support & Downloads page. (credit) Give this a try then let us know how you get on. Edited February 3, 2013 by Duke
gengads Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 This is the Vmware which I have used I downloaded from Vmware web site {VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.1.0.update03-800380.x86_64}. Your one is different and it's used for Dell server I will try this option and will let you know the outcome. Since I am not expert on Dell server I can get into RIAD controller but unable to select it or unable to make any changes what is the processes to go about this issue, I will delete what ever I got in it. and start the process all over again, can you please advice me how to delete the RAID-0 from Dell 1950? Do I have to first bring it offline and then delete it...... Many Thanks I really appreciate all your effort
Duke Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 can you please advice me how to delete the RAID-0 from Dell 1950? Do I have to first bring it offline and then delete it...... It depends on the specific server / RAID card and I can't remember exactly which my old PE1950's had... but the general process is: Reboot the server and be looking at the screen while it boots back up Just after the Dell BIOS screen, you should see something like 'Adaptec RAID BIOS' or 'PERC 5/i Controller' you should get the option to hit a key (maybe ctrl+a) to enter the RAID BIOS Once in the RAID BIOS, you should be able to use the keyboard to navigate around and delete the old array, then create a new RAID 1 array and select which disks you want to put in it Save the array changes, then give it a little while to build the array, then try booting off the VMware/Dell disk Cheers, Chris
gengads Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 When you look at the raid option it shows gray which means I can not highlight it. In order for me to highlight and to make changes it need to have it as white color then I can change the raid-0 to Raid-1. not only that I am having a problem with the second drive I can see it on the RAID controller. the disk is there put you can't do anything to it, that reduces to 460mb size rather then 930mb which is almost to 1 TB. Any idea why this is like this? I hope install vmware/dell option will resolve this issue and get all me 930mb disk Doing initialization on virtual disk is it necessary to do it? Thanks for the quick respond
gengads Posted February 3, 2013 Posted February 3, 2013 One more thing if you look at option PD Mgmt it the states on the second physical disk is says SATA Foreign how do we bring it online same as disk 1. That may help you to understand even more
gengads Posted February 4, 2013 Posted February 4, 2013 Chris, Issue has been fixed by delete both physical disk and then rebuild it all over again that's when I was able to chose between RAID-0/1. I have used the software you have suggested that did not solve the problem it gave me the same error message, I spend all my weekend to understand how this disk works. finally managed to read and solve the issue. Any body who face this issue just rebuild you drives all over again and that should solve the problem You have been very helpful, and would like to thank you so much for that. Top Man 1
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