Crazy raid problem.

[Booshanky]

Ok, here's the issue.

I've got a server running win2k server and it basically functions as a humongous file server. It's got one PCI raid card for the IDE drives and the SATA drives (which are the OS drives) are RAID'ed through the motherboard SATA RAID.

It's a DFI Lanparty Nforce 4 board. Not sure of the exact model.

Anyway, I needed to get two more 500 gig drives in RAID 1 so I bought a Highpoint rocketraid 1740 card.

I installed the card and plugged in the drives, but when I did that my onboard RAID just disappeared. You know that little mini-bios that comes up saying "detecting array" etc? Just stopped showing up after I installed that highpoint.

I thought this was odd, but I was going to move the OS drives to the new controller anyway so I did that. Funny thing though. You can't just move drives from one controller to the next and expect them to work. And the big problem was that this highpoint controller doesn't seem to have any way of creating raid 1 array out of one good drive and one empty drive. The only option it gives you is to "initialize" both drives (which wipes them clean) and then you can do whatever you want with them.

So I gave in and did this. I ended up restoring the OS image to the new array from a backup.

Then I booted the computer to a wonderful blue screen because there aren't any drivers installed for this Highpoint card.

Is there any way to get this to work? Right now I'm in the process of wiping the drives, putting them back on the motherboard RAID and restoring the OS from a backup. But eventually I'd like to move these drives over to this highpoint card. Is there any way to preemptively install the drivers for the RAID card before I add the drives to it?

Moved from General Hardware
General Hardware Moderator -- MarcVenice

 

[Nothinman]

I thought this was odd, but I was going to move the OS drives to the new controller anyway so I did that. Funny thing though. You can't just move drives from one controller to the next and expect them to work. And the big problem was that this highpoint controller doesn't seem to have any way of creating raid 1 array out of one good drive and one empty drive. The only option it gives you is to "initialize" both drives (which wipes them clean) and then you can do whatever you want with them.

Yea, that's generally how hardware RAID controllers work and one reason why I prefer software RAID. Although adding another one shouldn't have affected the onboard controller, there might've just been a BIOS setting that you needed to fix.

So I gave in and did this. I ended up restoring the OS image to the new array from a backup.

Then I booted the computer to a wonderful blue screen because there aren't any drivers installed for this Highpoint card.

Good luck with that. A repair install might add the proper drivers and get you booting but that's about your only chance AFAIK.

 

[Booshanky]

Ok, lets try and break this down a bit.

Lets say that I've got an OS on two drives that are in RAID 1. Lets say that RAID array dies and I can only get another raid controller.

How do I get those drives to work on this new controller?

When I just plug the drives into the RAID controller it doesn't work because they're not an array on that controller. When I wipe the drives and make them a new array on that controller and then restore from backup, the OS won't boot because it doesn't have any drivers installed for this controller card.

There's got to be a way to do this right?

When you say I should do a "repair install" what exactly do you mean by that?

The drivers for this RAID controller consist basically of a .cat, .inf. and a .sys file. Should I place those somewhere in the windows directory before I do the backup and then restore from that?

 

[Nothinman]

There's got to be a way to do this right?

Yea, but it's a lot of work. MS has whitepapers on restoring backups to different hardware.

When you say I should do a "repair install" what exactly do you mean by that?

Boot from the install CD, feed it the right drivers and hit repair install when you get the option.

 

[MerlinRML]

So it sounds like the problem you're probably having is that you're out of option rom space. Each component that has a BIOS - in this case your Highpoint RAID, your IDE RAID, and your onboard RAID - all load their BIOS as an option rom and communicate with the motherboard BIOS. There is a limited amount of space to load all of these, and it sounds like your board won't handle anymore. You can try contacting the manufacturer to see what they recommend or look at the docs.

It may also be just a case of the highpoint card interfering with the NVRAID BIOS. Either way, if you remove your highpoint card, you should get the NVRAID BIOS back.

Moving RAID arrays between different types of the same brand of controller may work, as long as the company keeps the array metadata consistent between models and you can upload that data to a BIOS if needed. Moving from one brand to another (i.e. NVRAID to Highpoint) never seems to work.

If you want to migrate your data, your best bet is to remove the Highpoint card. Restore your OS to the NVRAID controller. Load the highpoint driver while the system is running. You then should follow the knowledge base articles on moving to a new controller. You may need to mess around with the BIOS boot order and do some OS repairs and such to get everything working.

 

[Booshanky]

Originally posted by: MerlinRML
So it sounds like the problem you're probably having is that you're out of option rom space. Each component that has a BIOS - in this case your Highpoint RAID, your IDE RAID, and your onboard RAID - all load their BIOS as an option rom and communicate with the motherboard BIOS. There is a limited amount of space to load all of these, and it sounds like your board won't handle anymore. You can try contacting the manufacturer to see what they recommend or look at the docs.

It may also be just a case of the highpoint card interfering with the NVRAID BIOS. Either way, if you remove your highpoint card, you should get the NVRAID BIOS back.

That's exactly right. The thing is, when I just narrow it down to the highpoint raid and the motherboard raid, it still overrides it. So I guess it's just some sort of interference problem. Which sucks because I'd like to use both.

Moving RAID arrays between different types of the same brand of controller may work, as long as the company keeps the array metadata consistent between models and you can upload that data to a BIOS if needed. Moving from one brand to another (i.e. NVRAID to Highpoint) never seems to work.

Yeah, NVRAID to highpoint didn't work at all.

If you want to migrate your data, your best bet is to remove the Highpoint card. Restore your OS to the NVRAID controller. Load the highpoint driver while the system is running. You then should follow the knowledge base articles on moving to a new controller. You may need to mess around with the BIOS boot order and do some OS repairs and such to get everything working.

I'm curious though, there are just those three files listed on the CD (a .cat, .inf. and a .sys) as drivers for this thing. Normally when I install hardware I plug in the hardware, boot to windows and just install that way. The problem is that this hardware doesn't let me boot into windows at all. So I need to install the driver beforehand somehow, make a backup, then restore from the backup to the highpoint controller where it'll already have the driver ready to go.

How would I go about that? Where would I put those three files to ensure windows will look for them when it boots? Do you have the KB articles?


If you guys can help me get this working you'll be my personal heroes.