Need help loading NT on a Dell Server (Mass Storage not Detected)

Andy22

Golden Member
Jun 8, 2001
1,425
0
71
OK, here's the problem. I have a Dell PowerEdge 4300 that comes with a Perc2\SC (RAID) PCI SCSI card as well as an onboard Adaptec SCSI card. The Perc2 card has two 9 gig SCSI drives hooked to it and the Adaptec has the cd-rom drive hooked to it. OK, the server did have NT Server 4.0 on it and worked just fine but I needed to put Workstation it so I went to about loading it up.

The problem is that when it gets to the "Specify additional devices" screen in the startup section, no matter what I do, it gives me the following message "No Mass Storage Devices Found" fater I hit <Enter> to proceed. Initially it sees the Adaptec card but does not see the Perc2 card so I loaded the latest drivers for it but it and then it does list it but still returns the afore mentioned error. Since the PERC2 card is RAID I rebuilt the array (RAID 1) including formatting both drives in the PERC2 setup screen but it did not help. I even tried unplugging the PERC2 card and going through the Adaptec card but had the same result.

Any ideas as to what I am missing or doing wrong?

Thanks for any help.
 

Andy22

Golden Member
Jun 8, 2001
1,425
0
71
*Bump*

Anyone?

C'mon, I use to frequent this board enough to know how many very savy people there are perusing these threads.
 

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
31,528
3
76
I am not one of those "savvy people" you speak of (they ARE here) but I'll just take a stab at it. In W2K, which is NT-based, you can't load two SCSI devices at the startup (OS load startup) screen. Oh sure, it keeps prompting you "any additional devices? Press F6 to load" etc, but what happens is that 30 minutes later when the OS is finished loading, and you reboot, guess what? It only sees the first SCSI device/controller that you loaded, not the second one. I have onboard RAID (necessitating the Highpoint 370 controller, which is a SCSI device) and a Promise TX2 100 which is an ATA100 IDE controller card. Both are seen as SCSI devices by by the bios and W2K.

The fix? Well, for me in W2K anyway, I only loaded the Highpoint drivers at OS load time, so I could boot from the raid array that the OS was loaded on. Then, after the OS was all stable and happy, I reinstalled the Promise card and it's drivers and all is well.

If this is of no help at all, I'm sorry. Good luck and please let us know what "it" was. :)
 

Andy22

Golden Member
Jun 8, 2001
1,425
0
71
Thanks for the stab Mike...unfortunately this is NT and not 2000. This is for a user of mine that will be using it as a web server.

Any other brave souls want to take a stab?

 

Athlon4all

Diamond Member
Jun 18, 2001
5,416
0
76
just FYI, NT is 2k so anything for the most part (and this is one of them), for NT is for 2k. Try what he said
 

tech

Member
Oct 16, 1999
156
0
0
F6 is correct for NT 4. When you start the installation assuming that you boot from the CDROM keep pressing F6 and it will ask you for a driver like 30 seconds into the installation. There will be NO prompt to press F6. If you don't press F6 at the beginning and wait until it ask you for a driver, it will be too late. Built a bunch of Compaq servers with a raid card and not one would see the raid card without the F6 key in the beginning. Same this with IBM servers running NT 4.0 . It's an NT thing. It's an old OS with old drivers in the media. I haven't built a dell but it should be the same thing. Good luck.
 

CrashX

Golden Member
Oct 31, 1999
1,125
0
0
tech is 100% correct. You have to hit F6 at the VERY beginning of the install. Before it even asks you, start hitting F6! It will prompt you to insert a disk later on.
 

Andy22

Golden Member
Jun 8, 2001
1,425
0
71
Geeze man..you guys rock!!!! Hitting F6 was the trick...so thanks MichealD, Tech and Crashx.

I don't understand though, why it doesn't work when it gets to the screen where you can specify your additional controller (doing what I was doing before). I used the most recent drivers for the SCSI card. Oh well, F6 DOES work and that's all that matters.

Thanks again...I have never failed to get a techincal question answered for me here!

 

MichaelD

Lifer
Jan 16, 2001
31,528
3
76
Good stuff! Glad to hear that you fixed your problem. Happy server serving, Andy22. :)