Promise Tx4000, Maxtor drive and Netvista recognition

[mikesw]

I bought my old Netvista 6794-21U with the latest upgraded BIOS for 137Gig drives from work.

The mini-tower has 2 cd/dvd IDE drives, zip250 IDE, floppy, and a Seagate ATA-5 drive (40gig).

It also has Win2k Pro and a 1.8Ghz Pentium 4 with 1.5Gigs of PC133 memory (max).

I'm trying to upgrade to a larger HDD. So I bought a Maxtor Diamond 21 PATA/IDE 500Gig drive STM3500630A with

firmware 3.AAE (supposedly they have a 3.AAK out but they haven't sent it to me yet). NOTE: Maxtor/Seagate don't

mention this particular model on their website????! I also bought a TX4000 Promise IDE RAID

PCI board that has the latest BIOS 1.0.37 and s/w drivers for XP and 2000. The reason I bought this vs. a

better TX4xxx series that does Raid 5 and/or 10 is because the later is limited to 1Terabyte max per the specs

for each drive (so that if four drives are put together in JBOD format it gives 4 terabytes max) whereas the

TX4000 specs say the limit is in Exabytes. Thus, for future growth I'm not restricted since HDD's are at 1Terabyte

now! and next year the better raid cards would be obsolete. Yes, I know they have a SATA Raid card, but I

didn't want to start putting other non-IDE drives in the system since if one fails (i.e. the Seagate ATA-5) I can

swap it out since the motherboard is IDE and not SATA.

Here's my problem:

a). Without any drives connected to the TX4000 Raid card, the NetVista boots up, the RAID Bios scans

for drives and not finding any boots into Win2K Pro. Moreover, the OS under device Manager recognizes

the PCI Raid card, and PAM local reads the Computer name but is grayed out. This is to be expected.

Just testing to see if the system recognize the new hardware.

b ). Now that the PCI card is recognized, I shut down and connect the Maxtor 500Gig drive to IDE #1 of

of the Raid card and bootup.

c). The RAID BIOS scans and displays two lines with <ESC> strings in them, but before I can read what

it says, it clears the screen and starts booting in WIN2K PRO. The documentation says a RAID setup window

should be displayed (not the computer BIOS), but doesn't mention anything about these other two lines that

I can't read. What do this lines say?

d). After booting into Win2K and logging in, I go to Windows Explorer hoping to see a drive letter

assigned to the new drive although when selecting it it should complain. However, I don't see the drive letter.

e). I go to device manager under Devices to see if the drive shows up there as Maxtor. Nothing is shown!

f). I go to device manager under "Storage ->Disk Management" to see if I can see the drive so that I

can select it to format it to NTFS. It just sits there saying it is trying to connect to the ....manager.

g). I enter PowerMax v5.0 from Maxtor or PAM Local and can't do anything there either.

h). The new HDD is spinning and getting hot, so I know power is reaching the HDD.

So what can I do next to make the promise RAID card work with the MAXTOR, NETVISTA and Win2K?

See Items (c,d,e,f,g) above and what can be done to get them to work.

PS: The documentation says to connect the frontpanel wire with the power and disk access LED from the

motherboard to the PROMISE RAID Card connector. However, won't this disable the capability of

seeing if the Seagate ATA-5 drive is being accessed since it is still connected to the motherboard and

not the RAID card?

If the LED only works for the motherboard with local drive access blinking vs. only Raid drive blinking,

can one buy an after market LED with wire to be connected to the RAID card and I just drill a hole in

the mini-tower for this other blinking LED?

Due to the size limitation of this tower, is there any after market disk drive extenders that allow me to

connect the drives in another tower to the RAID card in the first computer tower?

[puntoMX]

Hi,

I see you know software but not hardware so you are on the right spot here.

Why didn´t you try to hit <ESC> when it prompts, you need to build a RAID first to use it. But I se eyou only have one 500GB HDD? So, you need at least 2 to make that RAID as you know and as far as I remember the Promise card only works RAID, not as an extra HDD controller.

Forget that LED, that´s only if you have some extra LEDs like in most server tower/racks .

[mikesw]

I also tried hitting the <ESC> a few times while it was scanning with the HDD connected, but nothing happened

other than booting up Windows 2K. I guess one way that I just thought about now so that I can see the message

is to disconnect the Seagate ATA-5 drive so the Windows 2K OS doesn't boot, and the computer BIOS will

say no OS found - this will pause the display while I read the messages. I'll try this tonight.

The specs for TX4000 RAID says it can do JBOD. I take this to mean that I wouldn't have to build a RAID 0, 1, 0+1

which require multiple drives (at least two). My interpretation of JBOD on a RAID controller board means

that I could have only one or more plugged in. (in my case one til I can buy another).

When the RAID BIOS boots asking me to configure it, it

should at that point in time not know what kind of configuration you want for the various capabilities of

the card. Thus, at this time it would display a menu whereby one would select JBOD and it would be smart

enough to scan to find out that you have one or more (up to four) connected to the card. If one selects on the menu

option to do RAID 0,1, 0+1, then at this point, it would display to the user a message that it only detects one drive and

states that two are required etc (depending on the configuration). Moreover, one would think the interpretation by

the RAID BIOS software would be that if a drive failed, then it would see only one drive and [maybe] state

that the 2nd drive is missing, defective etc ; and, since the IDE controller on the disk drive may be damaged

whereby the RAID BIOS can't determine via a scan how many drives really are connected I would think it would

believe that there is only one drive. In this scenario the RAID BIOS shouldn't become dumb and the

PAM software/ WIN2K software would tell the admin by email that there is a HDD failure and to fix it. The OS

shouldn't crash until the admin takes it down to fix it (assuming no hot swap capability).

The documentation on this card for setup doesn't tell me a whole lot other than shows a picture of a menu.

Until I can get the RAID BIOS to recognize this one disk, I can't determine what it does really under various

scenarios. That's why I'm posting here. Perhaps someone can take their working system down, such that

only one disk is plugged into the TX4000 and post here whether they are experiencing the same problem

as me. This will tell me if I've done something wrong and to look at what to do next.

[puntoMX]

Ah, forgot to say it isn´t <ESC> it´s <CTRL-F>. That should give you access to the BIOS.

[bonestonne]

My interpretation of JBOD on a RAID controller board means that I could have only one or more plugged in.

"Although, JBOD also makes the disks appear to be a single one, it accomplishes that by combining the drives into one larger logical one."

JBOD is spanning, similar to using RAID to make one partition over multiple drives. it doesn't matter how many there are, it just has to be configured properly.

[mikesw]

I've had a chance to play with the machine by removing the HDD that contained the OS

and which isn't connected to the RAID card but is connected to the motherboard IDE channels.

Upon bootup, I was able to get the message to stay on the screen a few more seconds longer

instead of flashing quickly on the display before it started to try and automatically boot the OS.

Here's what the message said which isn't printed in the hardcopy install manual of the TX4000

raid controller. Later on I found out that the message is shown in the softcopy PDF user manual

on the CD.

FASTRACK TX4000 ....BIOS 1.0.0.37

Scanning IDE drives....

No array is defined

Press <Ctrl-F> to enter Fast Build Utility or

enter <ESC> to continue booting.....

The "No array is defined" is flashing at the user and since it is a new 500gig Maxtor HDD (only one),

this is expected since I haven't gotten into the RAID array setup utility yet.

Here's the reason I couldn't see the message fast enough!

The motherboard BIOS is setup to display three things

ESC POST

Setup F1

F12 alternate boot devices

When the system boots up it will stay at this screen which also displays the vendors logo (i.e. IBM).

I then hit 'ESC' to go into POST and continue booting.

After POST, the FastTrack TX4000 BIOS loads and starts scanning for IDE drives (this is slow enough to be seen).

After scanning it displays the rest of the messages as mentioned above.

HOWEVER, SINCE I HIT 'ESC' to do the POST, the FASTRACK BIOS reads this keystroke

to mean "...continue booting." Which it does! Thus it displays the message so fast and continues to boot the OS

before one gets a chance to read it. It does this regardless of the fact that I only hit 'ESC' once.

I then configured the motherboard BIOS not to display the "ESC POST" text although the functionality of

'ESC' is still there should I want to go into POST. When the computer is booted, the vendor logo along

with F1 and F12 are displayed, but not "ESC POST". At this point, I hit "carriage return" which then starts

the FASTRACK BIOS, scans the drives and displays the text above. Since I haven't hit 'ESC', I get a chance

to read the text and a chance to hit <CTRL-F> to go into the utility. If I wait to long (5 secs) it starts booting

into the OS.

Conclusion: The use of 'ESC' to continue booting is a poor design, since it is also used to enter POST in the

step before this one. It should have been <CTRL-C> since this key is ignored by the BIOS during boot and

to stay in-line with the use of CTRL keys i.e. <CTRL-F> for user input and per the definition of <CTRL-C>

meaning abort/exit. Moreover, the text message "enter <ESC> to continue booting...." isn't needed since

after 5 seconds, it boots anyways whether you hit 'ESC' or not!!!! Thus, this sentence doesn't provide

any added value or useful functionality to the FASTRACK BIOS.

The FASTRACK TX4000 as advertised provides RAID 0,1, 0+1, and not JBOD. However, the download

web page for this cards BIOS states that in the latest BIOS revision that a bug in the BIOS for JBOD was

fixed. Some of the pdf specs also state it can do JBOD along with alot of websites that sell this board.

(search google for TX4000 JBOD). When I go into the BIOS to configure the array (one disk), there is no

selection for JBOD. However, the disk was configured as RAID 0, (stripe) although all the striping will be

on one disk only regardless of the FASTRACK BIOS saying that the minimum disk count should be two.

It works with one. I also formated the disk using the Windows disk manager tool under device manager and

was able to create logical partitions on the drive.(split the drive although Windows 2K selected dynamic

disks??). So one could stretch definitions here and say I have a JBOD of one disk where the striping is

really just formatting one disk - which to the user (me) appears like any other disk.

NOTE: The local-PAM and remote-PAM (by entering this computers name as the remote computer to

go to) all show only the computer name in the tree, but nothing else. I can't drill down through the

array info that the user manual shows. Moreover, the toolbar is greyed out on the second bar (not the

top one). I don't have any idea why it is doing this. Moreover, if I try to login as "administrator"

without a password (currently log into the computer upon bootup without a password for administrator)

it complains login denied. Anyone have any suggestions to correct this? The PAM tools are the latest

revision.

Now in the process of playing around with the utility and windows disk configurations such as

dynamic, spanning, etc.

Edited July 18, 2007 by mikesw

[nmX.Memnoch]

I admittedly skipped over some of the text but it looks like you got it figured out.

For future reference of anyone else following the thread:

Any time you are attempting to configure a single drive on a Promise RAID controller you have to configure it as what's known as a 'single drive stripe array'. Basically you're creating a RAID0 array, but with only one drive. Since it's not really an array, you can still take the drive off of the Promise controller and read it on any standard PATA/SATA controller.

This is true of attempting to configure a single drive on pretty much any RAID controller whether it's PATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS, etc.