Please help !!! Perc 5i + VISTA set up problems

O

Omarko

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May 29, 2006
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23
hi guys

I am in need of desperate help.

this is my config:

eVGA 680i A1 SLI mobo BIOS P31 + Q6600
4x1GB Crucial Ballistix PC6400 RAM (running at 4-4-4-12 2T with 2.1V)
2 x 8800GT in SLI using the 2 x black slots
1 x HDA Mystique sound card in the bottom PCI slot

now ...

I got myself a Perc 5i card w/BBU plus SAS fanout cable plus 3 x Fujitsu MAX3147NC SAS 15K 146GB drives which I want to set up as RAID-0

Previously I had Vista 64bit running from my SATA 150GB raptor. Before I did anything I loaded BIOS defaults.

this is what happened:

1. I installed the card, connected 2 drives, turned on PC, went into Perc 5i BIOS, set up an array (RAID-0, 64kb stripe, Write thru), initialized it, enabled BIOS on card feature, restarted PC. Vista 64bit booted successfully, picked up new HW, found right name, driver BUT I got the "Device can not start (Code 10)" error in the Device manager. So what I did was uninstall ed it and I also ticked "delete driver" hoping that upon next restart the driver will re-initialize itself and might work. After restarted I get a blue screen saying that megasas.sys driver caused an issue ... then its asking my to put in my Vista install disc to repair. Did that, no success, still blue screen.

So I disconnected my Raptor and decided to keep only the SAS controller with the Raid-0 array and install windows straight onto that. When Vista booted of the DVD, when you get to the section where you select a HDD to install the OS on, I got NOTHING. I loaded the drivers (from DELL Ftp site) onto a USB and tried to install them manually (through load driver function) but it did not pick up any avail drives. Perc 5i is natively supported by Vista and has inbuilt drivers so I do not know whats going on.

Next I tried to remove on of the SLI cards, no difference, Vista install still can not detect the array.

This is my Perc 5i BIOS version:

http://imagestore.ugbox.net/image/IMG_5277_78b2a9fcce8efb9f32157bd.jpg

I have since taken the card out and repaired my Windows Vista 64bit copy (on Raptor drive) using System restore so I can post this.

Please help, I spent all this money on the controller, cable and 3 very expensive HDDs ... I do not know what else I can try to get this going ...
 
I'm not 100% sure on this but I don't think you can load boot time F6 install storage drivers from a USB disk. I think you must either do this with a floppy drive or use something like nlite to slipstream the drivers and create a new install DVD. In any case the floppy drivers must have in the root of the floppy a particular file in addition to just the drivers - I think oemsetup.inf or txtsetup.oem. If the F6 loaded drivers are not just right Vista will not see any drives at all. This is the correct and current driver for Vista 64 for the controller

http://ftp.us.dell.com/SAS-RAID/PERC-5_Vista64_2.8.0.64.exe

and this is the current firmware from Dell

http://ftp.us.dell.com/SAS-RAID/R150746.EXE

Good luck on getting this up and running. Once you get it going you should not have any other problems and the speed of those Fujitsu MAX SAS drives is really, really, nice. ;)
 
when installing VISTA, there is no option to press F6 (like in XP) ...

however, during installation when you get to the screen where it shows detected HDDs, there is an option to load a driver for eg for storage controllers, when you select the option you can grab the drivers either from a floppy, USB, CD,DVD or another HDD you may have installed in the system.

I am fine to get to that stage, and I used the same driver package you provided in the link, it detects it, shows me the product name, loads the driver, but when it goes back to the HDD selection screen, its not there.

I wonder, is there anything else I need to do in the CTRL+R card BIOS when I set up the array besides initializing it?
 
Don't know if you have this but the manual for the controller is here

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/storage/RAID/PERC5/index.htm

Only things I can think of - did you do a full initialization of the newly created virtual disk or a fast initialization? I'm not 100% on this but I think in fast it still has to do a full initialization in the background and the disk is not accessable until initialization has completed. I'd do full and wait for it to say done. Last one I can think of is you also need to set the new virtual disk as bootable. I think this is is the same section where you enable the controller bios.
 
thanks for the tips so far ...

yes I have the manual ... did not find anything of use in there unfortunately ...

I did a FAST initialization, will try to do a full one although the problem is the card, not the VD as even when there is nothing connected to the card, I get the same error in Vista (Unable to start device (code10)).


its gotta be the motherboard :( Might need to try to get a different one as a last resort ...
 
that code usually signifies that there is a hardware issue with either not enough resources availible for the system to use the card, or the card ishaving some sort of conflict via IRQ's perc 5 controllers are sometimes a lil fickel about that crap...


Using Raid 0 man u got gutz... personally to me my data is worth more to me than the speed... but to each their own...

also try disabling the raid controllers bios

the error you are getting is related to the hardware having conflicts... and make sure you update your vista install with the latest drivers from the manufacturer of the card... because i have found that some bios's of the raid cards are not compatible with native vista/xp drivers. they have to be at a certain version or some strange crap can happen like data corruption etc.
 
got the latest BIOS on the card and latest drivers from DELL (for Vista 64bit)

SATA RAID, IDE, 1394, COM, FLOPPY all disabled in BIOS

I think it might have to do with my eVGA 680i BIOS version ... apparently anything above P28 has issues with some RAID cards ... will try to flash tonight to P28 and see what happens

re: RAID-0 - all my data (eg documents, photos etc etc) is stored on my 24/7 server that has regular backups , the RAID-0 contains only games + apps, single 15K drive will be dedicated to OS
 
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