Trouble Booting with RAID card plugged in after firmware upgrade

[ksherman]

Howdy,

I have a HighPoint RocketRAID 620 card in my desktop (connected to a RAID5 5 drive SansDigital Tower). I have been having consistency issues with it for a while (drive becomes 'dirty' according to Windows, separate issue not sure if it is ExFAT related or something else) and I decided to try updating the cards BIOS firmware to see if maybe that would help with my issues.

Well, it seems the firmware update didn't go very well. Usually, the card's BIOS would load right after the on-board AHCI does it's thing. Now, the system just hangs if I have it plugged in. If I take the card out, everything boots fine. If I put it back in, it hangs on boot. With the card plugged in, I can't even get into the computer's main BIOS at all.

So, if I updated the firmware incorrectly and I wanted to try to re-update it, I cannot think of how to do it if the system wont boot at all.

Any suggestions? I'm afraid that if I tried to replace the card, my array would be gone... Next go around, I'm dumping money on some overpriced NAS or DroboBox. This storage stuff scares me.

 

[Emulex]

good raid cards (hmm im selling cheap LSI units) tattoo the drives and keep a copy of the drives serial #'s in nvram. so you can replace the controller.

in the case of intel matrix raid - it tattoo's the drive so you can replace the mobo and raid will be intact.

I can't say i know the highpoint as i consider them really low-end. stick to LSI chipset raid controllers man they have been around for a long time and they are used by every big oem

 

[ksherman]

Someday I'd like to get an LSI, if it is a better card. But it looks like their cheapest SATA III card is $250...

Well, I'm really hoping that replacing the card wont lose my array. I think I might be able to pick up another from Fry's tomorrow. Should I hold off on just swapping out the card until I can confirm with the manufacturer? Who knows if they'll actually reply (they only have email support, yay)

 

[Old Hippie]

I have a HighPoint RocketRAID 620 card in my desktop (connected to a RAID5 5 drive SansDigital Tower). I have been having consistency issues with it for a while (drive becomes 'dirty' according to Windows, separate issue not sure if it is ExFAT related or something else) and I decided to try updating the cards BIOS firmware to see if maybe that would help with my issues.

Isn't that just a PCI SATA3 controller card?

Why do you think it's the card and not the SansDigital Tower that's causing the problem?

AFAIK the actual RAID is in the tower and you're only using the card for an eSATA connection?

Or am I way off base?