Re: Possible Onbaord RAID Controller Failure
- From: Paul <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:16:32 -0400
Jeff wrote:
Hi Everyone,
I have done a little searching; but, I haven't seen anything relevant to my problem. I hope the post is appropriate here.
My problem is that I started trying to determine why my Windows XP computer would not boot normally. I was able to boot into Safe Mode with Networking for about five days, and then I couldn't even boot into safe mode.
After some initial troubleshooting, I was helped by Daave on the Window XP General forum. He provided a great outline for troubleshooting which began with making sure there was not malware which had found its way into the system. My problem at that point was that when booting up via two different vendor's .iso files, I would get to a point where the hard drives were not recognized.
As a point of reference, the hard drives were two identical drives set up as a RAID0 configuration.
I can provide many more details of my troubleshooting plan; but, maybe it will be easier if I give you the major results.
First, the system that I am trying to troubleshoot has an onboard Promoise RAID controller.
As a point of reference, if I run the Win XP setup disk, I get to the Setup screen which lists the drives which are available for installation. There are four instances of Unknown Devices, and no volumes available for the installation of XP.
I have made sure to load current RAID drivers during the XP Set routine. Yet the RAID configuration is not identified.
If I go into the RAID setup utility which runs after POST, and I delete the RAID0 volume, and then I go into BIOS and change the setting for SATA as RAID from Yes to No, and reboot the system.... which spins up the Win XP setup disk... I enter the setup routine again.
This time... I have two volumes available for the installation.
This leads me to believe that either the RAID controller on the motherboard is bad, or the drivers are not up-to-date for the RAID controller during Win XP setup. I know that I have the most current drivers from ASUS/Promise, so I am reasonably certain that they are not the problem.
Does anyone think that I am on the right track?
Replacing the motherboard probabaly isn't a good option. Do you know if there is a way to disable the RAID controller on the motherboard? Are there RAID controllers mounted to aftermarket cards that I can run as a standalone from the motherboard? (I will investigate those options today; but, I thought you might know off the top of your head.)
I will probably just go ahead and install a larger hard drive in a non-RAID configuration, and try to get things back up and running. The added speed of the RAID0 configuration isn't really necessary now as this is more of a back-up system.
I will always be a little suspect, though, fearing that other components on the board may be close to failure.
The original thread that I was working through with Daave is http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/e4f5f555b3121946/4795274e8331c587?hl=en&q
Thanks for any help that can be offered.
Jeff
The first thing I'd like you to do, is tell us the motherboard
model number and the kind of Promise chip.
My immediate reaction is this. The majority of "RAID as an afterthought"
added to motherboards, are "soft" RAID devices. It is like simple IDE
controllers with a RAID overlay. It relies on the firmware Extended
INT 0x13, for booting the RAID during POST. And once booted, the
driver in the OS does something similar. The driver accesses the drives
as simple IDE devices, and does it in a way suitable for making it
look like RAID 0 (striped) or RAID 1 (mirrored). So it is the drivers
job, to decide which disk to access and when. The hardware chip itself
is not striping or mirroring on its own. There would be no register
in the hardware, declaring the stripe size. Only the driver knows.
The chip is dumb.
So if it was my hardware, a diagnostic would be to
1) Flip to non-RAID mode in the BIOS.
2) Boot with the hard drive manufacturer diagnostic. These are
available in floppy, CD, and perhaps even USB stick versions.
The diagnostic may use FreeDOS and run the diagnostic on top of
that. By doing so, no Windows OS needs to be working.
3) Usually, the diagnostic will be read-only. If the diagnostic
has options which do writes, it should warn you it is about
to wipe out all data.
4) Some hard drive manufacturers provide no diagnostics. I'm
not sure now, but Hitachi may not have any for download.
If the diagnostic passes without throwing errors, then you know
the hardware is not busted. (Check both disks, so you know both
cables are working.) Then the problem is at some other level.
1) CMOS problem. Clear CMOS (with the power cord on the computer unplugged).
Make sure you've written down the BIOS settings before hand, as
you'll need to restore them. Very few motherboards support
"profiles" and easy restoration.
2) BIOS firmware problem. The firmware is protected by a checksum,
so if the BIOS firmware was corrupted, it should be detected at
POST by the boot block. I see little reason to be re-flashing the
BIOS at this point. The boot block starts first, and verifies the
main BIOS (holding the Promise code) is OK.
3) Metadata content of disks. When you use the RAID Setup in the BIOS,
you're writing a 64K block (reserved sector) somewhere on the disk.
My experience with my own Promise, is I suspect it may even use
metadata when in non-RAID mode. But I haven't wasted the time
proving it. When you go into the BIOS and delete the RAID array,
that too should make a change to the metadata. Whether it completely
erases the area used, or writes "ordinary IDE" in the block is something
I don't know.
4) Windows driver problem.
5) Windows installation problem. Windows will not rewrite the MBR, if
there is already a signature in the first sector where the MBR is stored.
This causes a problem on the first reboot. I don't know if partitioning
or partition types (all partitions EXT2 or whatever), would prevent
Windows from starting over again, and putting a new partition somewhere.
I thoroughly erase disks, if I'm hitting a brick wall. DBAN from
dban.org is one such tool. Linux and "dd" using /dev/zero is a more
efficient erase, and only takes me seconds to prepare a disk, by
erasing the first few megabytes. With the RAID drives, I'd probably
erase them right up to the very end, to ensure I'd wiped the metadata
block.
When you see the "unknown devices" and there are four of them,
do they appear to be identical devices ? How many hard drives are
present in the computer in the first place ? When I'm installing
here at home, I like to unplug all drives not related to the
installation, so I'm only dealing with the boot drive or boot array.
So please post what kind of motherboard this is, how many drives
are present, and where they're connected.
Paul
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