what are disk signatures and why can't I create one for my raid array?

[Big Bwana]

Howdy all,

I'm trying to setup my external raid array and I'm running into problems...I've got 6 9 gig scsi 2 drives configured in raid 5 with an ami megaraid controller. I can boot into win2k fine, but I can't use the disk manager to create a partition on the array because it freezes during the sigunature stage. Tried using fdisk from a dos prompt, but that froze while verifying the drive. I'm thinking this is a problem beneath the os level, but I'd still like to know what a disk signature is.

Thanks,

BB

 

[Nevo]

Disk Administrator will write a signature to new disks it finds when it's started.

Sounds like Disk Admin is having trouble writing to the first sector of this disk.

Do you have virus protection turned on in your BIOS? Turn it off; disk admin needs to write to the MBR of this disk.

Otherwise, check for a driver update for the RAID card.

 

[Windogg]

Did you configure the drives within the controller's BIOS?

 

[Big Bwana]

well, here's a summary of what I've done.

I originally could not boot into windows with the drive array turned on and attached to the raid card. I flashed the bios to the latest version and loaded the latest win2k drivers for it, recreated the two raid 5 arrays (3 9 gig drives each) and the machine boots to windows.

this is the point I'm stuck at. although disk admin recognizes two drives of the correct size, it says their type is unknown. when I try to write a signature to it, the console freezes.

I'm not sure what else I can do within the raid card's bios. I'm only given options to create and manage arrays or to format (which I've done) the physical drives.

virus protection on my mobo is turned off and the arrays were created within the raid card's bios.



BB