Howto create raid array with Adaptec 39320A-R Card...

[Dumass_Freakboy]

Ok, some have you may have been following my origonal thread....
about my purchasing all of my SCSI stuff. Well, now it has all arrived, and I've put it all together in my system. I went into the contoller setup, and enabled the HostRaid for both channels of the controller.

Now. It was my assumption that to create a raid0 array I would need to seperate the drives across the channels (to get the performance gain, like with IDE). When I go into the settings to select the drives to include with the array, it will only scan one channel, and select the two drives in that channel, and let me select those drives to be a part of the array. So, does this not matter for SCSI? Because that throws my entire understanding of SCSI out the window!

Am I missing something here?

That would mean I could put 15 scsi devices on one channel, and raid them all to make a huge array.

 

[dirtydr]

That would mean I could put 15 scsi devices on one channel, and raid them all to make a huge array.

Indeed you can or multiple arrays on a single channel. I would not put more that 4 devices per channel though. It sounds like you are headed in the right direction... 2 standalone drives on channel 1, and the level 0 array with up to 4 members on channel 2.

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

Ahhhhhh... thanks!

Update: I don't know whats going on. Having some technical issues with the Windows installer properly recognising two of the drives on the controller & not being able to create a partition....Will post later tonight if I can't resolve them, hopefully somebody will be able to help

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

Ok. Last night I created two RAID0 paritions because the Windows installer did not recognize the two 9.1 gb disks which weren't in a raid0 array. I installed windows, and everthing went well. Installed a ton of drivers, and rebooted several times. I had everything working, except for the X2 processor. XP Pro would not recognize the second core. I ran WCPUID and it recognized the name string as the cpu it is, but the second string it recognized it as an AMD 11000+ processor I tried installing the driver from AMD's site to let windows recognise the second core, still nothing. I went to windows updates and updated everything, nothing. (i rebooted still after installing these drivers)

So I figured it must be the bios on the mobo. I went to gigabytes website and installed the F6 bios (the F7 wasn't there last night, just saw that there now, I had the F1 bios with my board initally). I flashed it, and rebooted, went into the bios and under the Hard Disk boot priority, and the SCSI drives were no longer there!! (they were there before). All it shows is that stuff in the SS. I tried flashing back to the F5 bios, but that still wouldn't let the bios recognize my drives. I set the boot drive in the adaptec bios to bootable, still nothing. I went to look at the bios information at the adaptec site, but it warned about having an OEM card, and the card being screwed up if I were to flash a non-retail boxed card (an oem). I don't mind re-installing windows, but it would be nice if I could fix this without a reinstall.

I thought about flashing back to the oldest bios from gigabytes website that supports the X2 processor, and that would be the

Does anybody have any thoughts as to what might be my problem? (I have this posted in other forums, because this crosses between windows, motherboards, cpu's, and hard drives)

Heres the setup.
Gigabyte GA-K8SNSC-939 (with F5 bios -F3 is suposed support dual core)
AMD X2 4600+
2x 512MB Kingmax
ATI Radeon X800Pro
Adaptec 39320a-r SCSI RAID card (two channel, with 1.25 bios)
2x 9.1 GB Ultra160 10,000 rpm disks on channel 0 (RAID0 the two disks for games partition)
2x 9.1 GB Ultra160 10,000 rpm disks on channel 1 (Wanted to have one disk for Windows, and one for applications)
2x100GB WD IDE disks
DVD-RW, CD-RW
500W Antec SmartPower
P180

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

Wowie. Think I may have solved it. Seems these old BIOS' in current computers don't have much ROM to store all of the possible boot devices... (well, stuff showed on the screen during POST)

Solution

The error referenced above indicates that the system ROM space is full and it has no more room for additional adapters which use ROM space. If you have a RAID and a SCSI adapter, and both adapters are set up to boot, then first try disabling the BIOS on the SCSI adapter to free up some ROM space.

Note: There are video and other types of adapters which could also use ROM space. It may be possible to disable the BIOS on these cards as well.

If your system has an onboard Adaptec controller or has an Adaptec PCI card (for example,2940), the BIOS can be disabled to free up ROM space for your additional controllers.

Note: You will not be able to boot from the disabled controller.

Such a pain in the A$$ these old computers are. I was begenning to think I was going to have to return my mobo and get a new one!
GOGO IBM!

 

[unhappy_mage]

It's not just an old computer problem - this is not fixed yet, and with SLI especially you can easily hit the limit. Each video card takes 64k or something, and the total available is only 256k IIRC. I hit this on my server box with *cough* 3 different storage adapters. Moved down to only 2, and back to normal.

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

YES! That solved the one problem, but theres a new one that popped up after flashing the mobo... during the install... Just as the message "Setup Is Starting Windows" comes up on the bottom, my setup restarts my pc! Just after installing all of the controller cards.
I have now removed one of the storage controllers, and in the hard disk boot priority it shows the scsi disks again!

Maybe I should reflash the mobo to an older version... like F5 or something? I didn't see F4 or F3 on their website available for download.... Once i go below F3, the mobo doesn't support X2 processors anymore...

Controllers.... I have the Native IDE raid controller on it...SATA raid controller... and an addon SCSI raid controller.....plus i had an addon raid ide controller.... lucky I didn't put on that extra ide controller...

Been struggling with this since Sunday

Anybody?? HELP!!! PLEASE!

 

[dirtydr]

Just so we're on the same page, you manage to f6, install the controller, partition & format the array, copy files then on the next reboot you get endless reboot syndrome?

Is the scsi controller running the latest bios? If not i'd update that first before down flashing the mobo. Maybe try disabling the sata raid controller via jumper (or bios if no jumper is available) also if you are not using it. Also, you running a pretty beefy psu?

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

I'm running an Antec 500W SmartPower psu. I manage to F6, install the controller, and then after the "Setup is starting Windows" message on the bottom appears, it reboots. I do not get to partition the drives, or copy any files. Right after the message appears, and it appears for half a second only (i've done this like 30 times already) it reboots.

The scsi controller is running the second most latest bios. I was reading up on updating it, but on the Adaptec site they said to contact them because if you have an OEM card (like me) you might fry your board if you don't ensure it's the retail board. (The person I bought it from, bought it in a lot of 10 controllers from antec directly).

I tried disabling the SATA controller already, hasn't helped any.

I have thought once or twice about the power supply not having enough power...
X800Pro 56W
X2 4600 110W
6x HD's 25W each
Mobo 25W
Memory 10W each
SCSI controller card 25W
IDE controller card 10W
Floppy 5W
Fans 3W each (4)
KB & M 6W
CD burner 20W
DVD burner 25W
PS Fan 3W
467Watts Peak consumption - Not ideal, but still sufficient. 93.4% use at peak. A 550W or 600W would be ideal to make that 80%. The 25W is a little overzealous for peak use of hard drives, but its the max people have seen... average is around 7-8W, 25W is for spinup. So it's unlikely I would be burning two disks, while the drives are spinning up at bootup, while playing a game I'm probably around 150W less than that on typical use.

Will it make a difference if there are two connectors only coming off the power supply, and i'm running everything off only the two?

I was planning tonight on removing the SCSI controller, disconnecting the SCSI drives' power, and trying to install to another drive, an IDE drive to install windows and see what happens there.

I had installed windows before with everything attached... and it worked!

 

[dirtydr]

Ahh, 500W should be more than enough.

I feel your pain as to wtf is going wrong. At this point I'd follow up on that controller bios issue and email adaptec with this problem. I've contacted them many moons ago for support on a dpt raid controller I snapped up from ebay. Cant remember the exact problem I was having, nor the solution (2k server install related iirc) but I do remember whoever emailed me back offered up a solution that ended up working.

I had expected something like "We are not supporting DPT controllers... especially used" or no response and was pleasantly surprised. Maybe they can shed some light on the problem.... possibly omit the buying it used part though

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

It was only used by me! I bought it new! But because the seller bought it in a lot of 10 from adaptec, he got a discount, and i got passed the discount

I have now removed both of the controllers, and disconnected the hard drives power.

I installed a 20gb drive I had lying around from before, and to my surprise I still had an instllation of SUSE on it, and it booted up fine.

I tried installing again, booting up, and i had the same problem after removing the controller

I think my CD might be bad .... well CD's... i have tried three different disks, and none of them got past that screen. (i'm using a copy from my mom... .XP Professional bought it through the schoolboard for CHEEP!)

I just now tried resetting the cmos too. What about erasing it? It tells how to in the manual....

I just found this!!!!!
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=930052&goto=nextnewest

 

[dirtydr]

I see. I thought you got it used in a lot from antec At least now you know its not the controller.

Don't think i'd put it the way barron did in that other thread because I have seen some solid gigabyte boards but I've also seen enough flaky ones to not head down that road.

Looks like a google search of that mobo model turns up squat too And gigabytes site does not list suggested memory modules. Do you have any other ram laying around to try out? If not just for the heck of it, try the install with a single stick.

 

[Dumass_Freakboy]

Definately worth a try!! I sent off an email to gigabyte last night too!

When i get home tonight i'll try installing with each stick of ram seperately.