Lost RAID 5 Array...

I have, er... had, a RAID 5 array comprised of six 180GB Apple Drive modules. The Xserve RAID had cache battery backups installed and was on a UPS, but I had disabled the drive cache for all drives quite some time ago as I wasn't sure how reliable the cache battery backups were anymore. This wasn't performance intensive, it was mainly a second repository for backups.
Unfortunately, I came in to work Friday morning to find the RAID powered down (in standby mode). I powered it back up (it was still shown as being mounted on the file server which is running Mac OS X Server 10.3.9, but the volume was empty and listed the correct amount free). Of course, that didn't bring up and data, so I rebooted both the Xserve and the Xserve RAID.
Disk Utility showed no array and neither did RAID Admin.
No luck. I've swapped controllers, upgraded the controllers to the latest firmware. Nothing.
I've searched through this discussion forum's history and tried everything I ran across (power up order of the Xserve and Xserve RAID, powering down the RAID, pulling the cache battery backups, and waiting five minutes, the "Recognize Array" feature in RAID Admin, DiskWarrior, etc). Nada.
Any additional suggestions? Most of the "lost array" discussions are from last year, so I'm surprised this happened to me (maybe because the Xserve RAID was still running old firmware). Also, what is the "Recognize Array" feature really for if it won't allow you to select drives to try to recognize?
I still have not tracked down how the RAID was powered down (it's in a private server room and I'm the only admin that manages the servers in there).
Thanks for any help or insight anyone can provide.
Dual 1.33Ghz Xserve G4 w/Xserve RAID Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Shane: Yes. I tried Disk Warrior, but as there's no RAID Set, there's no volume even available to try to repair.
Dave: Unfortunately, I came to the same conclusion that you have. Very odd that this issue seems so prevalent on the pre-1.5 firmware.
I've kissed my data goodbye (it was all backups, so not vital, but I would have liked to keep it), recreated the set and we'll see how it goes with the new firmware. I'm also setting up a second RAID to mirror the data to for more redundancy in the future.
Andrew: I'm sorry to hear you're having the same issue, but glad you've got a backup. This issue definitely is a big time waster in the least.
Unfortunately, it appears (from my experience, unless I too was missing some undocumented modifier key combo) that you have to have atleast one drive that still remembers what set it belongs to in order to use the "Recognize Array" feature.
From past discussions, I've gained that Apple can actually recover/rebuild the RAID set from drives sent to them, but in my case it wasn't worth spending any additional amount of money on getting the RAID set back up (my time was costly enough).

Similar Messages

WinXP-64 bit corrupts existing RAID array

I've got an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard running Win XP Pro SP2 on two 36 gig SATA Raptors. Everything was working fine, but I wanted to try the 64 bit version of XP. Grabbed an old 80 gig PATA drive and threw that in the case. Unplugged the SATA drives so as not to risk messing with the existing working OS. Installed the latest 1218 x64 beta and it worked well.
The problem was that when I shut down and reconnected my old RAID array, windows wouldn't boot from it. I lost everything and had to rebuild Windows from scratch. So now I know to never unplug the SATA drives
Rebuilt WinXP on the RAID array and then tried rebooting with the PATA drive with the 64 bit OS. Came up with the "drive needs checking" screen, and proceeds to "fix" the RAID array while ignoring my frantic pounding on the Logitech USB keyboard to stop. Rebooted and yes, the new install was nuked. Okay, since it's gone anyway, reboot to the 64 bit OS and make sure it's got the 64 bit RAID drivers installed.
Reinstall WinXP on the RAID array, reboot to the 64 bit OS on the other drive and the same old scandisk comes and nukes it AGAIN!
So now the PATA drive is sitting on the shelf again, unless someone here can suggest what is causing this problem.
System Specs
Athlon64 3500
gig of PQI 3200 at 2-2-2-5 2.6
2x36 gig Raptors on ports 3-4
Plextor PX-716a DVD+_RW
Visiontek X800 Pro.

The first time you re-installed Win 32 on the raid that was a bit drastic. A repair ought to have done the job.
The problem was probably that you disconnected the array but that's where the boot.ini was and that file needed to be modified to add the path to the Win64 install.
Since you took out the array the Win64 install created a new boot.ini on the PATA drive. Even when you tell BIOS to boot off the array, Windows has a bad habit of looking at the IDE channels & using the boot.ini if it finds one there - but the file it found didn't point to the array of course.
So basically if you already have Win32 on the array I would leave that array connected normally when installing Win64 on the PATA drive and all should be well.
I've installed Win64 on the same array as my Win32 install and they co-exist happily. I reckon that's the most efficient way to do it. The main thing is to make separate partitions for Win32, Win64 and data files when you install Win32 in the first place. The two OSs can share the same data files, incuding stuff like email.

Scratch disk with two RAID arrays

I have 2 500GB disks in a RAID0 array for Windows / programs and another 1T RAID1 array for data. Where should I place the scratch disk?

Should I create a dedicated partition on the RAID0 array for the scratch space?
Please do yourself a big favor and do not do any partitions. They will only slow things down, as the OS thinks it's 2 physical HDD's and will tell them (the two logical HDD's), that it needs data at the same time. Remember, it's one physical HDD (even though it's striped, it's managed as one.
Now, here are my thoughts:
1.) RAID 0's will speed things up. However if one of the two drives fails, ALL is lost. I do not recommend using a RAID 0 (any flavor of 0), for the system/program disk. If you do, be sure to have a great backup scheme and use it.
2.) Now, as of CS, PS no longer has a real limitation on how much HDD space it can use for Scratch Disks. Going back, on was limited to 4GB and had the ability to set 4 of these. Back then, having say a 32GB SCSI HDD, and doing some 4GB partitions made sense. Now, it does not.
I'd get a very fast, smaller system HDD. Then, you can use either of those RAID arrays for your media, and the other for your Scratch Disks. Having a dedicated hardware RAID controller will speed things up too.
On my system, used almost exclusively for PS, AI, InDesign, Painter and Video editing, I have 4x 1TB SATA II's for Scratch Disks, 2x 1TB SATA II's for still & video and audio. My system drive is a 500GB SATA II. Were I building now, I'd probably go with RAID 0 for the media and also a RAID 0 for my Video Exports, with non-striped 1TB SATA II's for my Scratch Disks.
Just some thoughts,
Hunt

ACL not working with RAID array

Posted this before but it wasn't clear.
Brand new install of Leopard Server 10.5.1. Have an HFS+ SCSI RAID array attached. I am unable to get ACLs to work using this volume.
Using the command sudo fsaclctl -a I get the following:
<CFDictionary 0x106580 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable, count = 9, capacity = 12, pairs = (
0 : <CFString 0x1020f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_manufacturer"} = <CFString 0x106140 0xa00c5174>{contents = "HPT"}
1 : <CFString 0x1066b0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "spparallelscsidevicetype"} = <CFNumber 0x1066e0 0xa00c5174>{value = +0, type = kCFNumberSInt32Type}
3 : <CFString 0x101ac0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_revision"} = <CFString 0x106170 0xa00c5174>{contents = "4.00"}
4 : <CFString 0x106660 0xa00c5174>{contents = "spparallelscsidevicefeatures"} = <CFArray 0x106690 0xa00c5174>{type = immutable, count = 0, values = (
5 : <CFString 0x106740 0xa00c5174>{contents = "spparallelscsi_target"} = <CFString 0xa00d16b4 0xa00c5174>{contents = "0"}
6 : <CFString 0x101a60 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_model"} = <CFString 0x106150 0xa00c5174>{contents = "DISK 1_0"}
7 : <CFString 0x1066f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "spparallelscsiit_nexusfeatures"} = <CFArray 0x106720 0xa00c5174>{type = immutable, count = 0, values = (
9 : <CFString 0x1018f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "_items"} = <CFArray 0x106030 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable-small, count = 1, values = (
0 : <CFDictionary 0x106070 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable, count = 14, capacity = 24, pairs = (
0 : <CFString 0x103c80 0xa00c5174>{contents = "os9_drivers"} = <CFString 0xa00d4024 0xa00c5174>{contents = "no"}
1 : <CFString 0x106180 0xa00c5174>{contents = "partitionmaptype"} = <CFString 0x1061a0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "applepartition_maptype"}
2 : <CFString 0x1029b0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "volumes"} = <CFArray 0x106250 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable-small, count = 1, values = (
0 : <CFDictionary 0x106290 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable, count = 7, capacity = 12, pairs = (
5 : <CFString 0x1026b0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "mount_point"} = <CFString 0x1063a0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "/Volumes/SUPERBACKUP"}
9 : <CFString 0x101940 0xa00c5174>{contents = "_name"} = <CFString 0x106270 0xa00c5174>{contents = "SUPERBACKUP"}
10 : <CFString 0x103820 0xa00c5174>{contents = "writable"} = <CFString 0xa00d4024 0xa00c5174>{contents = "no"}
12 : <CFString 0x101f40 0xa00c5174>{contents = "bsd_name"} = <CFString 0x106350 0xa00c5174>{contents = "disk3s3"}
13 : <CFString 0x1025d0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "free_space"} = <CFString 0x106380 0xa00c5174>{contents = "3.27 TB"}
14 : <CFString 0x1024f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "file_system"} = <CFString 0x106370 0xa00c5174>{contents = "HFS+"}
15 : <CFString 0xa00d4ca4 0xa00c5174>{contents = "size"} = <CFString 0x1061d0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "4.09 TB"}
3 : <CFString 0x101ac0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_revision"} = <CFString 0x106170 0xa00c5174>{contents = "4.00"}
6 : <CFString 0x101a60 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_model"} = <CFString 0x106150 0xa00c5174>{contents = "DISK 1_0"}
9 : <CFString 0x101940 0xa00c5174>{contents = "_name"} = <CFString 0x106050 0xa00c5174>{contents = "SCSI Logical Unit @ 0"}
10 : <CFString 0x103720 0xa00c5174>{contents = "volumes_anonymous"} = <CFArray 0x1060b0 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable-small, count = 1, values = (
0 : <CFDictionary 0x1060f0 0xa00c5174>{type = mutable, count = 5, capacity = 12, pairs = (
9 : <CFString 0x101940 0xa00c5174>{contents = "_name"} = <CFString 0x106350 0xa00c5174>{contents = "disk3s3"}
10 : <CFString 0x103820 0xa00c5174>{contents = "writable"} = <CFString 0xa00d4024 0xa00c5174>{contents = "no"}
12 : <CFString 0x1025d0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "free_space"} = <CFString 0x106380 0xa00c5174>{contents = "3.27 TB"}
14 : <CFString 0x1024f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "file_system"} = <CFString 0x106370 0xa00c5174>{contents = "HFS+"}
15 : <CFString 0xa00d4ca4 0xa00c5174>{contents = "size"} = <CFString 0x1061d0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "4.09 TB"}
12 : <CFString 0x101f40 0xa00c5174>{contents = "bsd_name"} = <CFString 0x106130 0xa00c5174>{contents = "disk3"}
13 : <CFString 0x106230 0xa00c5174>{contents = "spparallelscsi_lun"} = <CFString 0xa00d16b4 0xa00c5174>{contents = "0"}
14 : <CFString 0x101a40 0xa00c5174>{contents = "detachable_drive"} = <CFString 0xa00d4024 0xa00c5174>{contents = "no"}
16 : <CFString 0x1020f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "device_manufacturer"} = <CFString 0x106140 0xa00c5174>{contents = "HPT"}
17 : <CFString 0x101ec0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "removable_media"} = <CFString 0xa00d4024 0xa00c5174>{contents = "no"}
30 : <CFString 0x1061f0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "smart_status"} = <CFString 0x106210 0xa00c5174>{contents = "Not Supported"}
31 : <CFString 0xa00d4ca4 0xa00c5174>{contents = "size"} = <CFString 0x1061d0 0xa00c5174>{contents = "4.09 TB"}
10 : <CFString 0x101940 0xa00c5174>{contents = "_name"} = <CFString 0x106640 0xa00c5174>{contents = "SCSI Target Device @ 0"}
ProcessVolume: processing /
Access control lists are supported on /.
ProcessVolume: processing /Volumes/Superserver Internal 750
Access control lists are supported on /Volumes/Superserver Internal 750.
Does this mean that the RAID volume is incompatible with ACLs despite being a HFS+ formatted array? Would a fresh install of server fix this?
Completely lost here...can someone help?
Many thanks,
Joel.

I tried our old "unimporant" SCSI RAID and it reported:
"Support for access control lists is unknown."
I guess our RAID was formated/initialized ona a pre Intel server, yours too?
But your volume doesn't support a journaled HFS + (easliy changed in Disk Utility)
Better/faster if you get a server hang (takes much less time to "replay" the disk at boot than to wait for fsck to finish on such a large volume).
Ours look like this :
<CFString 0x1024b0 [0xa016a1a0]>{contents = "file_system"} = <CFString 0x106490 [0xa016a1a0]>{contents = "Journaled HFS+"} <-------------
It might be worth while trying a repartition on the new server beacuse our say:
<CFString 0x1062a0 [0xa016a1a0]>{contents = "partitionmaptype"} = <CFString 0x1062c0 [0xa016a1a0]>{contents = "applepartition_maptype"} <------ maybe not really important but (doesn't support booting on Intel systems). What should be used on Intel systems?). Should be GUID instead? Doesn't matter for non boot drives???
You haven't got too much data on it yet : Size "4.09 TB" - "3.27 TB" free.
In Tiger you set up the volume to use ACLs in WGM.
In Leopard SA it's a bit bewildering (haven't look at it since before 10.5.2 update though)...

Is It Possible to Clone RAID Array in a Safe and Easy Way?

Why do computer users need to clone RAID array, especially Windows Server users need to do RAID cloning? Generally speaking, they need to clone RAID array regularly in order to upgrade disk or migrate data from small disk to a larger one. A typical
example is that when the partitions on the hardware RAID runs out of space, you may prefer to rebuild the hardware RAID with larger hard disks. Then, you need to backup the data to another place, rebuild the hardware RAID and restore data again.
What a time-consuming task!
Is it possible to clone RAID array in a safe and easy way? The answer is yes and this article will introduce a RAID cloning software.

Hi jiangchunli,
Were you looking to post this question in some other forum? This looks like related to RAID and Disk upgrades.
This forum is meant for
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/recovery-manager/
Please let us know if this is indeed Hyper-V Recovery Manager related so we can help better.
Thanks
Praveen
Praveen/ www.PraveenKumar.in

Problem Installing 817 on Windows 2000 with RAID Array

I am having a problem installing Oracle under windows 2000 which has 2 x 60 GB discs configured in RAID array. When I run the setup program the cursor goes busy for about 10 seconds and returns back to normal and nothing happens !. No errors nothing.
However when I run the Object Manager in the ods_preinstall directory it starts but in the log file I get the following error message:-
02/14/02 09:46:18 : (892) : Error in IO Control call for disk PhysicalDrive0 (Error 21)
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The count = 28
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : The signature is 0x443aa035
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Error: First Partition of the disk must be an extended disk
02/14/02 09:46:19 : (892) : Found the partition: 7
Any idea whats happening....? Has anyone seen this before. Do I need to do something special in teh RAID..?
TIA
Martin

Here are some possible solutions:
1. The installation notes state that you must be logged on as Administrator to be able to install 9i. Are you logged on as the Administrator? Being logged on as user01 with Administrator priviledges isn't the same as Administrator.
2. Is the disk full? If I remember my installation correctly, I needed 3 times the size of the files. The documentation will tell you how much space you need.
Hope these two questions help
Regards,
Michael

Raid array being seen as 2 individual drives

Hi. Here is the issue as posted in other places. Still searching for the answer to this one.
Specs:
K7n2 delta2 platinum with b50 bios
2x1gb crucial pc3200 2.5cas ram
AMD Barton 2500
2 x 160gb 7200rpm 8mb cache SATA Samsung Hdd's
Thermaltake 430w psu
Gainward fx5700 ultra graphics
OS's: original xp corp, slipstreamed xp corp sp2
raid drivers: nvraid.sys v4.27, 5.10, 5.11 (also the needed nvatabus.sys with those)
I am NOT overclocked.
fsb 166
1:1 ram/cpu
no spread spectrum or other garbage
ddr400 patch disabled
PSU gives presumably stable reading (according to what I see), with amperage ratings above the required.
checked and rechecked cables for bad ones
ran mulitple scans on drives, all come up drives OK
I HAVE installed into Raid 0 already, this is not an issue of hardware failure as far as I am concerned.
So here is the scenario
I have properly set up the array, using correct bios settings and the raid setup utility, for a raid 0 array of those 2 hdd's listed. When booting into xp, either version, I have used all 3 of the driver sets listed. I have been reinstalling to do some performance tests on different configurations.
Anyway, for the last few nights I have been trying to get the windows setup to see the raid 0 array as one 300gb drive. It does not, no matter what I try. It sees them as 2 drives, each being 160gb (or thereabouts). These drives are matched, same firmware, same lot, so that should not be an issue.
I have used numberous tools to delete the mbr on the drives, both in an array and as single drives. I have done the same as well as tried an install and formatted each drive individually, still the same effect when the raid array is recreated.
Basically, I can find no good reason why the array is seen as individuals and not as an array. It is interesting to note, that even though xp setup sees the the array as 2 drives, I can complete the text based portion of setup. However, rebooting to start the GUI portion of setup, it will not boot. Obviously becuase the bios has the controller as the nvraid controller and it is supposed to be a raid 0 array, so I expected that.
Short of rewriting the mbr, either by deleting it or by changing each drive by formatting/partitioning/installing an OS on them, I cannot think of how to fix this. I know the drives and xp cd's work because I have already installed with them.
I understand what to do in the bios portion, and in the raid setup utility portion. I know that I can boot into windows as a single drive and use the nvraid tool to set it up, but that is not the way it should be, and that is not the way I am going to learn WHY this is happening.
Roger that. First set in bios enable raid (in this bios I have to enable IDE array, then choose which controller to actually enable raid on, which happens to have been SATA 1 & 2).
Second, upon reboot, I use the F10 key to enter raid utility. Then, set to striping, set stripe size (which was one of the things I am testing), and add the drives to the array. Next step is to create it. It asks to clear disc data, and it is done.
Have deleted that array as well as just cleared it. Have deleted it and reboot and rebuild it. Have deleted it, reboot, change bios back to non-raid, reboot. Reboot. Change bios back to raid enabled. Reboot. Rebuild array in raid utility, reboot. Run setup, only see 2 hdd's, not one array.
Umm, yep, that is about it.
More to the story now.
From some other posts I tried this.
1. destroy array. reboot. disable raid in bios. reboot. verify sata's visible as singles in bios.
2. power down. pull plugs on sata's. reboot. no drives visible.
3. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait 60 seconds. re-pin jumper. power up.
4. verify no drives. verify default bios settings. all is good
5. plug drives in. reboot. seen as singles. erase mbr on both drives. reboot
6. enable raid in bios, and choose sata 1 & 2 as "enabled". reboot.
7. use F10 key to setup raid. Here is the interesting part. Even though I deleted the array prior to all of this, and removed the drives to force an ESCD update, and cleard the cmos with the board jumper, and then before raid was enabled, cleared the mbr on the drives, when I started the raid utility, the array was already set up. That is the problem, whatever that is. I have read snippets where it is claimed that this chip or bios or whatever stores some kind of a table on this stuff, but this is a bit out of hand.
That combination, IMO, should have cleared anything out. But, the saga continues.
Thanks for you help BWM
[Edit] BTW, I have finally found a utility that will see a raid array and allow me to clear the arrays mbr. It is called SuperFdisk and is at ptdd.com. So far the only one that see's the 2 drives as 1.
Yeppers.
Started with v5.10 which came on a floppy with the mobo. Told setup to use both, nvatabus.sys and nvraid.sys. Even switched which one of the 2 I picked first, just to see.
Same thing with v4.27 and v5.11. Also tried it with just the nvraid.sys and just the nvatabus.sys (which obviously does squat for raid, lol)
Trying some new things now. Post in a little bit.
I am officially at 'Wit's End'.
Here is what I have tried now.
1.pull drive cables. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait. power up. no drives
2.plug sata 1 in. boot. drive detected.
3.boot to command.com, run MHDD, which is a nice russian utility similar to Spinrite. Used this to clear the mbr at hardware level, and do a complete erase.
4. reboot to command.com. run superfdisk. erase mbr.
5. pull plug on sata 1, and plug in sata 2 with sata 1 cable. repeat the erasure steps listed above.
6. pull plug on sata 2, no sata plugged in. reboot
7. change bios to raid enable on sata 1 & 2. power down
8. plug in sata 1 & 2. power up.
9. inspect raid utility. no listing of any arrays. reboot
10. in raid utility, build array. did NOT clear discs. reboot
11. attempt install. single drives found again (used both drivers).reboot
12. in raid utility, optioned to CLEAR discs (funny, rebuild option is never valid).reboot
13. attempt install, both drivers, still seen as 2 individuals.
Things to note. When creating an array when presumably there are none, it assigns the raid array an ID of 2. Upon reboot, the ID is now 1. Don't know what difference that makes.
Also, tried the install listed above with APIC functionality both off and on. Also, when on, set MPS to both 1.1 and 1.4. In addition to this, each variant I tried manual HAL layers of, in this order, ACPI (the one that actually spells ACPI out), ACPI Uniprocessor, MPS Uniprocessor, and let it choose it for me.
So, here I sit in a barca-lounger at 'Wit's End', with a warm cup of java and a dinner mint.

Here is the final product on the floppy disk that I used to successfully install a stable raid 0 on the MSI K7N2 Delta 2 Ultra 400 Platinum ms-6570e motherboard.
On root of floppy, from driverset 6.70. (after much testing, I used driver pack 5.10 for my nic and smbus. I used the realtek sound drivers off the cd for audio. I have used every driver pack I could find, and while some did offer better I/O or read/write latency, this set in general provided the most stable environment. The only drivers I used were these floppy drivers for SATA, the nic and smbus just mentioned, the sound just mentioned, and updating the nvide drivers to mside drivers)
<from sataraid directory>
disk1
idecoi.dll
nvatabus.sys
nvraid.cat
nvraid.inf
nvraid.sys
nvraidco.dll
<from legacy directory>
nvata.cat
nvatabus.inf
I used the txtsetup.oem from the sataraid directory, but edited this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvraid.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvraid.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvraid.cat
To this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvata.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvatabus.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvata.cat
Now, it is important to note that I installed or attempted to install at least 50 times. Bare minimum. I noticed when I use this custom driver disc that in the GUI portion of setup, XP asks me for files from the disc. I tried lot's of different things to alleviate this, and denied some of them.
One thing that really bugged me was that the bios would see my #2 optical, slave on secondary IDE channel. A dvd/rw drive. And I could even start the setup from it. But, once I got about 3/4 through copy file stage on text setup portion, I would hang. Becuase the drive was no longer accessible. Booting from the master would get me to the desktop, but the slave optical was nowhere to be found. Updating the ATA/IDE controller to the ms ide drivers would get it visible, but I kept having issues with stability after I did that.
The most stable method I found was to use my above listing of driver files for the floppy, and when in GUI mode setup asks about NVCOI.DLL, I skipped it, ignored it, and did not let setup install it. That actually got me to the desktop, with access to the slave optical as a "removable drive". It even knew what the hardware was. It just could not access it. On a reboot however, back to not seeing it. This method however did allow me to update the nvide driver with the mside driver with no stability issues. So, for me it was a raving success.
Here are some links regarding the SATA RAID driver workaround:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:jHbX5bNfGx4J:www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t51140.html+nforce2+nvraid.sys+ms+ide&hl=en&client=opera
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=292&Itemid
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:J9UhG2Kd8W4J:www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D32751+xp+2+sata+raid+0+seen+as+individual&hl=en&client=opera
Early on one problem I noticed was that in text setup mode of xp installation, there were long pauses that I have never seen before. I noticed that with both ide and sata installs. Also I noticed that when booting there was a really long pause when the xp logo is first seen in a sort of dim state till when it became bright and vivid.
Come to find out that this is a more or less typical scenario. Most instances that I read about were all pointing to the nvide driver. So, I found if I just updated the PATA controller to the standard ms ide driver, that went away and the whole system ran better.
It took awhile to figure out that if you install a driver with the nForce2 chip, you had to uninstall it or you will have issues. Herein was the main problem I encountered with the SATA RAID installs. The nvatabus.sys driver was required for an SATA RAID install. Omitting the ata driver was impossible. And for awhile I had no success updating the ms ide driver once I was to the desktop without major instability. Here are some links regarding the drivers for this chipset:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/latest-drivers-for-nforce-3-vt60240.html
In my browsing I came across some pretty interesting articles regarding ACPI. One thing I started playing with was the different HAL layers that xp installs on it's own, vs. me picking one manually (F5 key). I must have started the setup at least 50 times to figure out this: that this particular board does not give me the bios settings to install xp with anything but the ACPI Uniprocessor Hal. For instance, the MPS Uniprocessor HAL is much more responsive, but it lacks the IRQ's needed for setup to see the raid array. I booted to each one, some locking the system up, some booting OK. The one I found the best performance with early on was the one that spells out ACPI, not just initialized. (sorry, I don't want to look it up).
I seemed to be getting closer, but I could not find the needed bios settings to properly manage my ACPI, and since I was trying for RAID, I could not use the one that did work. Here is a link for that kind of stuff.
http://www.fceduc.umu.se/~jesruv98/info/acpi/acpi.html
Another thing that I did not like was being forced to use the dynamic overclocking feature of this board. I have a 333mhz barton core, and I have ddr400 ram. In optimized (fool proof) mode in bios, I was running asynchronous. I did not want that. So I set it down to run at 166mhz, with very slow and conservative settings on everything. Unfortunately, if I did this "manual" method, I was forced to use the dynamic overclocking. I thought I had that figured out. So I set everything to "optimized". But, as it turns out, the system had terrible stability without the dynamic overclocking set to at least Private. What this meant is that I could not rule out that my stability issues (corruptions and hangs and bsod) were from being overclocked even a tiny bit or not. And as if that were not enough, this bios has a special set of settings you must unlock to see. And one of those is paramount in achieving a stable system. It is called the DDR400 patch, and it is enabled by default. So, by pressing SHIFT+f2 AND CTRL+F3, these settings are now available. Like I said, I had to disable that DDR400 patch setting.
I also found out from the first day that my board shipped with the latest bios. I flashed the 2 prior versions with no success in more stability. After about 6 weeks of getting whipped on by this board, I found mention of some modded bios's for this board. I have used modded bios's in the past, some worked wonders, others required some serious effort to recover from. What I found out about this board is that there are 2 players who make the modded bios's. Here is the first index I found from a german website. This one actually is for the older B4 version only for the Platinum.
http://storage-raid-forum.de/viewtopic.php?t=2824
And here is an english forum for pretty much the same thing
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/bios-mods-for-k7n-and-k8-boards-vt55014.html
These links have a bit more information, and I decided to go with these. I tried versions b61,b62 and b71. I found b71 to work the best for me. Mind you I am not into overclocking or what-have-you. Just a rig that performs as well as it was advertised to do. Try these out for the bios information:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=385480
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=84715.0B62
Here is a page that had a bunch of misc stuff I found interesting:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:QkvLeKcbwjQJ:www.amdzone.com/modules.php%3Fop%3Dmodload%26name%3DPNphpBB2%26file%3Dviewtopic%26p%3D75383+nforce2+ultra+nvraid+driver+freeze&hl=en&client=opera
In the end, I have, I think, conquered this board. My findings can be summed up as follows, all in my opion only I guess.
1. There are some ACPI/APIC issues with this board or this chipset. I believe it also included drivers and some can be attributed to XP.
2. There are some major bios issues with this board.
3. There are some major driver issues concerning SATA/RAID. I am not sure who get's the boob prize, nVidia or MSI.
The only way I have found to get RAID 0 installed and stable is to modify my bios (which is a modded beta version), modify my driver disk for SATA/RAID, modify my install sequence for those drivers, modify my drivers within windows after setup, use different drivers from different driver packs for different pieces of hardware, and modify my HAL layer after everything else is done, to achieve peak performance.
If I had not spent soooo much time trying to get a stable install, I would have built up an Unattended CD, which has some possibilities for forcing non WHQL drivers. But, hey man, I am totally burn out on this board. And all it was for is a spare LAN box for when I go to a lanparty. Sheesh. Murphy's law.
Oh, and I also found out, with my own eyes, that the Soyo KT600 Dragon+ that I dumped for this wonderful board, is way faster. Faster read/writes, faster throughput on the nic, faster booting, much faster installs of xp. As a matter of fact, I could get my KT600 to get a consistent thruput on the network to my older KT266a board at 99%. That is pretty fast. 2 of these Platinum boards, on a sweet switch that is tweaked, will only go up to 91%, no matter how much I tweak them. The gigabit connects via a crossover cable at about 38% of full bore. This is tweaked stuff, but still. I listened to the hype. Dual channel memory, giglan, etc etc.
I hope this may help anyone else out there who is still fighting with these issues.
Out.
sul

Raid array removed, hard drives now wont work?? help

Hi all,
I had a KT266 pro2RU motherobard with 2 ibm 40gig hard drives that were in raid mode 0,
I took the 2 drives out of the computer and wanted to use one of them in another computer on a standard drive controller (single drive not raid) and i cant seem to access the disk to format it or install windows xp on it?, it keeps saying write access denied?,
I am thinking that i should have unmounted? the raid array before taking the drives out to put them back to normal but dont have the raid system any more, is there any way i can make these 2 40 gig drives work now?, or has it overwritten the HD bios or something?
If anyone can help i'd appreciate it
Cheers

i would try fdisk on it or partition magic if you have that
http://www.bootdisk.com will get you an me boot disk has f disk

RAID Arrays and WinXP Home

OK... I tried upgrading to Win XP 64-bit, but found there were games and applications that were screwy there and some items without 64-bit drivers, etc. So, I rolled back to a clean install of XP Home (32-bit).
After much effort, I was told today at a local techie-store that XP Home "doesn't allow for RAID arrays."
True?
I have 2 Hitachi 160GB drives I got last week at the afore-mentioned store for $112 US total! So, I am trying to make it all work, but am having no luck.
Any thoughts?
Scott in Los Angeles

There is a way to make some versions of windows do a software RAID, but the MSI board has a VIA and a Promise hardware array. Don't worry about what the 'techie' said.
Enable Promise controller in BIOS and set it for RAID.
Press Ctrl & F when prompted to set up your RAID array.
Boot to Windows CD
Press F6 when prompted and insert your Promise RAID disk.
Enjoy!

[VIA] K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard: Windows XP on a RAID ARRAY (fasttrak100 LITE)

Hi All!
I have a
MSI K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard, BIOS is the latest, official from MSI website,
Problem short description: Windows XP (sp1 or sp2 english, I tried both)
will not install when I set 2 x 40 Gig = ~80 Gig Stripe Array.
detailed description:
motherboard K7T266 PRO- RU BIOS 1.9 AMI BIOS.
AMD ATHLON XP 1700 + "Palomino" microprocessor, at default speeds.
one piece of 512 PC 3200 RAM, can tell details later.
Power supply: 400 W CODEGEN model : 300X.
HDD-s : one IBM deskstar, fully functional, and a SEAGATE barracuda. seagate SEATOOLS, IBM DFT 32 no errors both.
I set in the FASTTRAK 100 LITE "PDC20276R" (written on the chip) bios a STRIPE array. Powerquest drive magic , or the Windows XP CD handles it fine , as a 80 gig disk.
I downloaded ALL available versions of the FASTTAK 100 LITE driver from the MSI website.
(only tried: MSI driver FASTTRAK 100 lite, the only available driver on the MSI website, and various drivers from www.promise.com) ( http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=15&category=driver&os=0&go=GO ) (but I guess they WONT support my raid controller on the motherboard)
Windows XP CD , booting, Press F6 for additional RAID /SCSI drivers, I put in the floppy, choose WinXP fasttrak lite driver, windows continues, even formatting the 80 GIG disk, copy files- access the FASTTRAK.SYS driver, EITHER it says: no fixed disk present, press F3 to exit windows setup, or windows setup continues, copies files, reboots, and then STOP ERROR
http://www.martin555.dyndns.org/stop.jpg
please, help me with the following:
how to install XP on a raid array.
is it worth, will it be little bit faster disk load times etc?
is it secure if I trust the HDD-s?
any clue, how to overclock the AMD 1700+ athlon XP palomino to its maximum, but still stability?
AND : I read a lot about some MOD-ded BIOS called " KUNIBERT" , which makes the LITE raid to a FULL RAID and some other extras? where to get it and what to do?
email me if you can martin5 "at" freemail.hu
THANKS !

pardon me, dump? my english is not very perfect.. you mean to trow away, replace to something better, more stable power supply, more powerful?
you must see... first I would like to resolve the "installing XP on a raid array" problem,( how is it possible, is it worth, will it speed up hard disk access and load times... etc... ) and after that maybe I will OC the machine...
it is now , with a 8 cm ventillator and a large aluminium cooler 39 Celsius IDLE and goes to 45 Celsius during EVEREST benchmarking test. (temperatures on 1700+ default setting and OC-'d to 1900+. just experiencing with it. ) (I saw the toms hardware guide movie , smoking processors..)
cheers, Marton.

Unable to add partition on raid array, device or resource busy.

Greetings,
I want to be able to create a disk image of a software raid of one of my arch box.
I'm able to create my image with G4U successfully. I'm also able to restore my image without error on my new box.
When my system boot up, I make sure that my raid array are up by doing cat /proc/mdstat.
I can see that md1 and md2 are 2 of 2 and active raid 1. But, when I look at md0 this is what I got:
md0 : active raid1 sdb3[1]
6289344 blocks [2/1] [_/U]
I try to add the partition sda3 to md0 array with this command:
mdadm --manage /dev/md0 --add /dev/sda3
The output of this command give me this :
mdadm: Cannot open /dev/sda3: Device or resource busy.
It seems that this error only occurs on /dev/md0 (/) array. I'm 100% sure that both, my image and my drive (vmware hdd) are good.
This is my partition table:
/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 = /boot (md1) 100MB
/dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 = swap (md2) 2048MB
/dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 = / (md0) 8GB
I have also tried the image creation with Acronis... same error.

I solved my issue.
My menu.lst was wrong..
kernel /kernel26 root=/dev/md0 ro
I should add this to my menu.lst:
kernel /kernel26 root=/dev/md0 ro md=0,/dev/sda3,/dev/sdb3
Now it work.
I followed the archlinux raid guide who's telling this:
Nowadays (2009.02), with the mdadm hook in the initrd it it no longer necessary to add kernel parameters concerning the RAID array(s).
Which is wrong because my distro is 2009.02, if someone can add a note to the wiki it can be usefull.
Thanks for your support

I would like to migrate from Aperture. What happens to my Masters which are on a RAID array and then what do I do with my Vault which is on a separate Drive please ?

I am sorry, but I do noisy understand what happens to my RAW original Master files, which I keep offline on a RAID array and then what I do with my Vault which as all my edited photos ? Sorry for such a simple question, but would someone please help my lift the fog ?
Thanks,
Rob

Dear John ,
Apologies, as I am attempting to get to the bottom of this migration for my wife ( who is away on assignment ) and I am not 100% certain on the technical aspects of Aperture, so excuse my ignorance.
She has about 6TB worth of RAW Master images ( several 100 thousand ) which, as explained, are on an external RAID drive. She uses a separate Drive as a Vault . Can I assume that this Vault contains all of her edits, file structures , Metadata, etc ?
So, step by step........She can Import into Lightroom her Referenced Masters from her RAID and still keep them there ? Is that correct ?
The Managed Files that are backed up by her Vault , are in the pictures folder of her MacPro, but not in a structure that looks like her Aperture library ? This means Lightroom will just organize all the Managed files, simply by the date in the Metadata ? Am I correct ( Sorry for being so tech illiterate ).
How do I ensure she imports into Lighgtroom in exactly the same format as she runs her workflow in Aperture ? ( Projects, that are organized by year and shoot location and Albums within those projects with sub-locations, or species , etc ). What exactly do I need to do in Aperture please to organize Managed Files to create a mirror structure of Aperture on my internal Hard Drive ?
There are a couple of points I am unsure about in regard to Lightroom. Does it work in the same way as Aperture ? Meaning, can she still keep Master Files on an external RAID and Lightroom will reference them ? If the answer is yes, how do you back up your Managed ( edited ) work in Lightroom ? ( Can you still use an external Drive as a Vault ? ) . Will the vault she uses now be able to continue to back up Managed Files post migration ?

KT4 Ultra: problem config. raid array IDE3

I owe the MSI 6590 KT4 Ultra BSR mainboard and I have difficulties configurring the RAID array in striping mode, on the IDE3 controller.
The manual describes on page 2-18 it's possible to connect up to 2 hard drives, cdrom, 120mb fd and other devices to the IDE3 controller.
Unfortunately only one of my two MAXTOR D740X-6L (6L080J4) 80gig drives is recognized by the array.
One Maxtor hard drive is jumpered as MASTER and the other is set up as SLAVE.
When I hook up the cable to an ordinary IDE port (eg IDE1) the two drives are properly recognized.
Both drives can be formatted using the regular IDE ports, this means without any cluster errors or other errors so the drives are physically OK.
Before I wrote this post I checked the support section again to make sure I am using the latest BIOS which is 1.1. I also downgraded to 1.0, but that didn't solve my problem either.
Since I work in a computer shop now and then I had the opportunity to check two Maxtor Fireball3 30gig drives on a different MS-6590 RAID board (BIOS 1.1.) and exactly the same problem occurs: the 2nd drive won't be recognized in the ARRAY on IDE3.
Please tell me what to do to make the striping option fully work on my two IDENTICAL Maxtor hard drives since MSI support came up with a standard email, which didn't cheer me up at all. Hopefully this time they will investigate this matter since no doubt more people will experience this.

Thanks for the quick response, though it's not satisfactory for me (of course).
Actually before installing the new KT4 Ultra I owed the KT266 Pro RAID motherboard. It's true this board has two controllers for the RAID option. Nevertheless because after reading the manual of this new board I was convinced I could connect two hard drives on the IDE3-channel. This is the reason I decided to go ahead and to upgrade to this new mainboard.
I guess I have to go back to my employer and fall back again to my KT266 (MS6380).

Does "AirPort Disk" work with RAID arrays?

I currently have a RAID 10 array consisting of four USB hard drives all attached to a USB hub. I use it with three different macs (two leopard, one tiger) and have never had any problems. I know that you can attach multiple USB hard drives to an AirPort Extreme Base Station via a hub, but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?

...but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?
Why did you ask that question if the device has never appeared as multiple drives?
I understand that the AEBS is NOT a Mac.
(a) Some RAID devices are hardware RAID devices. These devices use several hard drives but appear to the outside world as a single hard drive.
(b) Some devices allow you to install several hard drives and then these must be pieced together into a software RAID and then appear as a single hard drive. OS X has the ability to do this.
If this device operates like the description in (a) it should have no problem connected to the AEBS.

New Builder needs some info K9A Plat. RAID Array help

This is a new build AMD 64x2 6000+, K9A platinum, Lite On DVD Re Writeable SATA, 2x74Gig WD Raptors in Raid 0, Asus X1950 pro Thermaltake 700 W PSU Crossfire cert.
BIOS registered my drives, Built array PC Rebooted, Installing Win XP pro Hit F6 install drivers, Format drives, Then before Install It says that :setup cannot copy the file ahcix86.inf.
If I skip it, it will install XP but when I try to boot from the hard drive It starts to load XP but crashes to the blue screen of death
*** Stop: 0x0000007BC ( 0xF78A2524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)
Has anyone got this error string?
First RAID array I would very much appreciate any help given.

Hi!
Looking at some info on Google and Microsoft site, I cannot find the BC error code, only the error code ending with B. It indicates an error with the boot device. It can be caused by several things.
Check that you are using the correct device drivers to install Windows
Also, check the installation CD. It could be that the disk was damaged and that you are missing a crucial file because of that
You can also try installing Windows again and choose to recover the previous installation.
If this all does not help, try installing Windows on a single HDD (no raid) to see if that will work.

Remote sync between two RAID arrays

We have two Xserve RAID arrays. One is here in our local office, the other at a remote site which hosts a few of our servers as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping the two synced? I would like to not have to deal with tape backups in the office, but the files being stored here are pretty valuable. I've dealt with this on the Windows side with a tool called Tacit. Essentially that was a Windows box that had proprietary software that would continually update remote Tacit boxes. Anything like that on the Mac side? Possibly free? Would Automator be able to sync me up?
Cheers!

I made a 400.rsync script in /etc/periodic/daily:
#!/bin/sh -
# @(#)daily 8.2 (Berkeley) 1/25/94
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
log=/var/log/rsync.log.`date -u ''+%y-%m-%d''`
date > $log
mountpoint=`mount | grep '/Volumes/EOFILMsan'`
if [ "X$mountpoint" == "X" ]
then
echo "Oh Oh, Filmsan not yet mounted" >> $log
/bin/mkdir -p /Volumes/EOFILMsan >> $log
/sbin/mount -t acfs EOFILMsan /Volumes/EOFILMsan >> $log
fi
echo "START VIDEOsan" >> $log
rsync -av --delete /Volumes/EOVIDEOsan/ /Volumes/EOFILMsan/EOVIDEOsan >> $log
echo "END VIDEOsan" >> $log
date >> $log

Lost RAID 5 Array...

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