Re: Gigabyte New Build Issue
- From: "Murray McNeill" <mmcneil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 13:25:28 -0400
"Paul" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:g0r6qm$flc$1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Murray McNeill wrote:Trying to get the Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4 board set up, and am having an issue with my
hard drives and the SB600 raid controller. I have two older Western
Digital drives in a RAID 0 configuration, but I cannot use the latest F4 BIOS with
them. I did get a stripe configured and working with the F3 BIOS, which
uses version 2.5x of the RAID controller code, but when I flash to the F4
BIOS, the RAID controller code version changes to 3.6x, and the machine
won't go past the message that indicates healthy stripe detected. It should
give the prompt for Ctrl F to enter RAID setup, but it just hangs.
Is it possible my drives are using some older version of SATA commands and
don't respond appropriately to commands from this new version of RAID
controller code?
I also tried wiping all partition information and initializing the stripe
with unformatted drives with the F4 BIOS, but even that failed. Drives are
seen by the F4 BIOS when the controller is in legacy IDE mode, but that's
not what I want.
Should also mention that these drives are WD Caviar 160 gig models, 7200RPM,
with the 2 Meg cache, so, not that out of date.
Thank you for any insights or suggestions
A solution I've used here, when disks won't play nice, is boot on
some computer, use my Linux LiveCD, and use a "dd" disk dump command
to wipe parts of the disk. You'd want the motherboard in a non-RAID
mode at the time (mainly to get past any problems you are having
posting). Disconnecting the drives would be one way to get into the
BIOS and change to a non-RAID mode, if you're having trouble.
I think this command wipes a single sector at the beginning of the disk.
/dev/sda has to match where Linux thinks the disk is located.
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
If using Knoppix LiveCD, you'd put "sudo" in front of the command, to
get root access from an ordinary user account. Knoppix can be obtained
from knopper.net. Use some of the older versions, in order to only
have to download 700MB ISO9660. (The latest are DVD size, and I haven't
tried testing those.)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
You set a count consistent with the amount of the disk you want to
erase. I used a value of 10000 to start. That should take less than
a minute to run, whatever that value equates to. That wipes near the
origin of the disk, and would only be effective if any RAID metadata
was contained near the origin. I'm not aware of any documentation
that states where RAID metadata is stored, so you'd have to experiment.
Once the disks are wiped, switch back to RAID mode in the BIOS, and
see if it'll POST properly.
I think the last time I used this method, I was changing OSes on
my spare disk, and the OS installer refused to touch the "foreign"
partition that was already on the disk.
dd is even available for Windows, but if using the Windows version,
be careful of your "of=" specification ! One little mistake means
erasing the wrong disk. I have used the "--list" option though,
to see what disks look like in Windows, when viewed by the program.
The advantage of the Linux LiveCD method, is only a single target
disk, plus the CD you boot from, need be connected to the computer
while using dd. The fact you can boot Linux LiveCD without installing,
is what makes it so handy. There are obviously other disk erasing
programs, but they might take a bit longer to complete.
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
This is an automated secure erase option for non-SCSI disks.
It uses a little-known command supported in the disk command
set. I've never tried it.
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/SecureErase.shtml
http://cmrr.ucsd.edu/people/Hughes/HDDEraseReadMe.txt
My thinking in the above, is that by returning the drive to
a clean state, the RAID BIOS will let you in.
Paul
Thank you for suggestion. Now that I think about it, I did have a Linux sytem installed on one of these drives a long time ago. I'll wager it's left some remnant of boot sector information that the newer RAID code doesn't like. It's not imperative that I upgrade to the latest BIOS, as the one I'm using works fine, and the new one offers no changes that would affect me. But since I have been using Windows based drive and partition tools, they probably haven't been showing me the true story of what's in the boot sectors. These drives are due for replacement soon anyway, so I'll try again when I rebuild the system with brand new drives that have never had a Linux system installed, and see how it goes from there.
Once again, thanks for the advice.
.
- References:
- Gigabyte New Build Issue
- From: Murray McNeill
- Re: Gigabyte New Build Issue
- From: Paul
- Gigabyte New Build Issue
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