Setting up RAID on Adaptec AIC-7899

Hi all,

I am a rank amatuer but have been volunteered by the local school to try and get a few dollars for an old Poweredge 4400 and thought that if I at least verified the disks then it would be worth more than scrap value.

It has an adaptec AIC-7899 SCSI Controller with 5 x Fujitsu MAJ3364MC Drives (in addition to another drive-pair that has a redhat OS on and seems to work fine although I know nothing at all about Redhat so cant do anything about my issue from the OS).

When I use the Apaptec SCSI selection utility to try and verify the media I get the following error on all 5 drives;

Unexpected SCSC Command Failure
Target SCSI ID: 0
SCSI CDB Sent 03 00 00 00 0E 00 70 00 03 00
Host Adapter status : 00h - No host adapter error
Target Status: 02h - check condition
Sense Key: 03h - medium error
+Sense code: 31h
+Sense code qualifier: 01h

During the normal boot sequence, the drives all come up with 160 - medium error.

I downloaded the Dell Open Manage Server Assistant ISO but that wont boot - so I dont know what to do about that either...

Having Googled for hours I am none the wiser but suspect that I have some settings wrong rather than a fault per se.

Does anyone have a dummies guide to how this SCSI array controller should be configured so that I can verify the drives?

Thanks in advance.

Andrew

Responses(1)

warwizard55

720 Posts

0

July 8th, 2007 07:00

Hi Andrew,

I guess the first step is to make the free call to dell tech support, they'll be able to lookup your system's configuration, and walk you through the BIOS settings and everything else needed to bring this beast back to life. That should be days faster than trying to do it here or on your own.

Generally PE4400 servers have either a DIMM and an enabler key on the motherboard for the RAID, or a PCI RAID controller. Take the cover off and look for a DIMM off by itself, if that is there I would guess that you do have a PERC 3/DI embedded controller, however your system was unplugged long enough to drain the CMOS battery and forget the CMOS settings. If this is the case do NOT change the BIOS settings, you could cause your existing RAID info to be lost. Dell-GaryS recently posted the recovery process. see his explanation.

Once you have the RAID recovered, you'll need to look at why your CDROM is not booting, check your boot order in the system BIOS, you may have had the CDROM removed from your boot list.

See documentation for the BIOS configuration here. If somebody has password protected it there is a password jumper in front right side on the M/B that you can assert to be able to clear out the password.

Good luck.

Warwizard

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Setting up RAID on Adaptec AIC-7899