bios not installed / no drives detected!!!

**NooNoo** · April 5th, 2007, 03:47 AM

There is something wrong with one of the drives. Unhook the raid array and put them one at a time on an ordinary ide port... then run the drive manufacturer's full drive diagnostics available here

**danshepstone** · April 5th, 2007, 08:14 PM

ok, running them now. thanks for the links!
btw, if one of the disks is bad, do you see any problem with replacing it with a 400-500gb disk? currently i have 4 disks at 250gb each.
best,
danny

**danshepstone** · April 5th, 2007, 08:25 PM

yup you were right.
second disk says "test interrupted by drive reset error/status code: 0002"
will pick up one tonight or tomorrow morning.
best,
danny

**danshepstone** · April 6th, 2007, 01:29 AM

also, should i buy another WD, since that's what i have now?

**NooNoo** · April 6th, 2007, 03:42 AM

Yes, Raid works best if you can use the same make and size... but the same size is more important than make. You should make sure that the cache on the drive (2, 8, 16 mb) is the same as the existing wds as well.

**danshepstone** · April 6th, 2007, 02:54 PM

arrgg!!! this f*@*(_(&#%!$^ thing!!!
i loaded windows xp and when it rebooted i got the blue screen agian. "check for viruses, remove newly installed hard drives/controllers, check drives, bla bla bla...
i partitioned 50gb, which is where i was going to place the os, so i could reinstall xp if i had to without loosing data. is my thinking right on this?
best,
danny

**danshepstone** · April 6th, 2007, 02:55 PM

i'm formating the whole thing now...

**NooNoo** · April 6th, 2007, 04:26 PM

The partition should have been fine... I think the problem is related to this

Q: How do I assign a booting device?
A: Press Ctrl+H to assign a booting device in the Adaptec RAID
Array Configuration BIOS Utility.

Did you assign a booting device?

**danshepstone** · April 6th, 2007, 04:56 PM

yes, i did set it to boot Raid. full format is still hanging at 54%....

**NooNoo** · April 7th, 2007, 04:27 AM

Are all 4 disks good? Are they the same size and type? Have you checked/replaced the cabling?

**danshepstone** · April 7th, 2007, 10:43 AM

they are all the same. going to replace the cables today. i think it is either that or something power related. the drive i thought was bad tested out ok with another power source.

**NooNoo** · April 8th, 2007, 04:25 AM

Aha! Yes power supplies can be funky, especially if they are not good quality. What make/model and wattage is in this raid machine?

**Ruslan** · April 8th, 2007, 01:37 PM

Just a quick thought - try to check memory with good memory checker.
Blue screens (as well as hal.dll messages can be also caused by defective memory stick).

**danshepstone** · April 8th, 2007, 02:46 PM

thanks, i ran memtest86 yesterday with no errors.
i have a NSP-450P4DL 450W Power Supply, and i don't think it it that now. i replaced that 'faulty' hard drive i just bought to find the same error on this one. i then switched the jumper to the 1 and 2 position (cable select setting) and the it tested out fine after that. i set the rest to do the same but no change. it still hangs at 55%. all drives are showing and they all test out fine.

i thought i'd try a new Raid controller (promise ultra133) and i'm trying to config that right now... probably not the problem...

i read somewhere about formating each drive separately and then configure the raid array. how do i formate them separately?

finally, might it be better to just hook up a drive to the IDE1 and install xp on there, and then set up the Raid up later? it might be easier to diagnose with xp running. also, how much performance would i be sacrificing by installing the OS separate from the Raid? keeping in mind this system will be used for editing video with Avid software.
best,
danny