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Samsung 1TB HD103SJ

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I am having a problem with my system recognizing one of my hard drives. I have a home built server with a total of 8 SATA ports--one controller controls the four black ports (Intel Matrix)--another controller the four red ports (LSI).

I was having trouble getting the system to recognize any of the drives connected to the red SATA ports. I discovered if I placed a jumper on the back of the drive and rebooted the system would recognize the drive and allow me to format.

I finally got all 4 Samsung HD103SJ's recognized last night and built a RAID 5 array with 3 X 1 TB drives. Then I screwed up. I broke the RAID array so I could add a fourth drive and in my haste I accidentally deleted the MBR from one of the four drives. Now, no matter what I do, the system will not recognize that drive ("DRIVE G:").

These five drives are not boot drives--my OS resides on a RAID 0 array and works just fine. I've tried placing DRIVE G: cable on a black port with the jumper in either position and system will not detect. I tried different red SATA ports, with jumper in either position, and system will not detect. I also plugged DRIVE G: into a black sata port and tried to "rewrite/refresh" the MBR using MBRTools--all to no avail.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I am afraid I'll have to RMA this drive but I'd really rather not. I am all out of ideas!!!

Asus P5BV-C4/L
MS Server 2008 Standard 64-bit
4 X 2 GB OCZ Fatality DDR2 800
2 X 320 WD Blue HDD RAID-0
5 X 1 TB Samsung HD103SJ HDD
Zalman 750 watt PSU
Nvidia GeForce 9500 1 Tb GPU


Thanks,

Jeff

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Does your BIOS recognize the presense of the HDD? Also, what jumper on the Samsung 1TBs are you referring to? The SATA mode jumper can be used to force the HDD to operate at SATA-1 speeds (1.5 Gbps vice 3.0 Gbps). Is that what you manually set?

If the BIOS recognizes, are you using the stock Server 2008 drivers or the most current Intel and Marvell drivers and apps? Also, are you using the Asus apps:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=4zanuPTONhbnijk4

Please clarify.

COLGeek said:
Does your BIOS recognize the presense of the HDD? Also, what jumper on the Samsung 1TBs are you referring to? The SATA mode jumper can be used to force the HDD to operate at SATA-1 speeds (1.5 Gbps vice 3.0 Gbps). Is that what you manually set?

If the BIOS recognizes, are you using the stock Server 2008 drivers or the most current Intel and Marvell drivers and apps? Also, are you using the Asus apps:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=4zanuPTONhbnijk4

Please clarify.




ColGeek:

Thanks for the reply. I can't see any hard drives that are connected to the red SATA ports in the BIOS. The BIOS only shows the four drives from the Matrix controller. In device manager I show three different controllers: the ICH7R/DH (version 8.8.0.1009), the Marvell 61xxx (version 1.2.0.57), and the "Microsoft iSCSI Initiator". Interestingly, when I look under "disk drives" in device manager, the Samsung drives on the black (matrix) sata ports show up as "Samsung HD 103SJ". The 3 drives on the red ports show as "Samsung HD 103SJ SCSI Disk Device".

I tried to update the Marvell controller to version 1.2.0.60 but the system says I am already using the most up to date version. All the drivers I installed came off the Asus website. Do I need to delete the SCSI controller?

When I set up my OS on the black ports I pressed CTRL-I to access Intel Matrix controller to set up the RAID 0 array. When I set up the RAID-5 on the red ports I had to switch the BIOS IDE mode from "IDE" from "RAID" in order to set up the array. I press CTRL-M to enter the Marvell controller then build the array--go back into BIOS and change "IDE" to "RAID" (I guess I am not using the LSI controller--sorry) so I can boot back to the OS.

Thank you for your patience--I've built several gaming rigs but this is my first attempt at setting up a server.

Thanks for any help.

Jeff

I think I figured it out. I am using the wrong Marvell controller. The Marvell package from Asus requires a floppy drive to extract to. I've tried to emulate a floppy with my USB stick and also used "Force FDD" but I keep getting the message "Cannot get disk information". Is there a way around this?

Thanks,

Jeff
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You use the floppy when installing Windows, you shouldn't have to use as you have already installed Server 2008 on a boot drive. The SCSI entry is how Windows shows the RAID controller. Not an issue.

When you press Ctrl-M at boot and enter the Marvell controller utility, can you see all of your HDDs in the RAID?

BTW, you definitely need to set your SATA mode to RAID in the BIOS since you are running 2 arrays.

Also, your mobo doesn't have an LSI controller from what I can see in the specs, only Intel and Marvell.

COLGeek said:
You use the floppy when installing Windows, you shouldn't have to use as you have already installed Server 2008 on a boot drive. The SCSI entry is how Windows shows the RAID controller. Not an issue.

When you press Ctrl-M at boot and enter the Marvell controller utility, can you see all of your HDDs in the RAID?

BTW, you definitely need to set your SATA mode to RAID in the BIOS since you are running 2 arrays.

Also, your mobo doesn't have an LSI controller from what I can see in the specs, only Intel and Marvell.


COLGeek:

When I press CTRL-M at boot I can see all drives on the Marvell controller except the drive I accidentally deleted the MBR from (they still don't show in BIOS). What happened, evidently, is that the Win08 64 driver from Asus uses the file extractor that wants a floppy so I downloaded and installed the Vista 64-bit drivers (hence the 1.2.0.57 version).

The problem I'm having getting the correct Win08 drivers installed is that the Asus file extractor wants a floppy drive to extract all the driver files to. I tried to emulate a floppy with my USB stick but I still get the "Cannot get disk information" error message from the Asus extractor. I went ahead and ordered a $10 floppy drive online--not sure why the extractor won't recognize my USB stick.

So, assuming my floppy drive works and I get the correct drivers installed, should the system see the drive I accidentally deleted the MBR from?

Just for kicks--the mobo manual references the LSI controller--not too interested in this--I don't believe it supports RAID 5.

Thanks for your help and guidance!

J

If your BIOS and the Marvell utility can't "see" the physical HDD attached, then you likely have a dead HDD. Even if the MBR is missing, the system should still recognize the physical presence of the drive itself. I suspect you have a coincidental failure of the HDD (I really don't see how you could have damaged the drive by what you described). At worst, you would just have to repartition the drive and add back the RAID otherwise.

BTW, do you have access to another PC that you could attached the HDD in question to in order to try to re-partition/check status of?

COLGeek said:
If your BIOS and the Marvell utility can't "see" the physical HDD attached, then you likely have a dead HDD. Even if the MBR is missing, the system should still recognize the physical presence of the drive itself. I suspect you have a coincidental failure of the HDD (I really don't see how you could have damaged the drive by what you described). At worst, you would just have to repartition the drive and add back the RAID otherwise.

BTW, do you have access to another PC that you could attached the HDD in question to in order to try to re-partition/check status of?


COLGeek:

Thanks for the reply. I got my 3.5" USB floppy in the mail today--I get the same message when I try to extract the Marvell 6145 drivers "Unable to get disk information". How the heck am I supposed to install these drivers???

I do have another PC to check the HDD on--I was too lazy to pull the whole cage out of the case--I'll do it tonight and report back to you Colonel.

Thanks again for all of your help. Anything else I can do to get the proper Marvell drivers installed???

Thanks,

Jeff

Are you trying to extract the drivers so that you can load them while installing Windows? You shouldn't need those particular drivers otherwise. You should be able to load Windows to your OS HDD and then install the drivers for the RAID controllers later in the process, after you have installed Windows.

COLGeek said:
Are you trying to extract the drivers so that you can load them while installing Windows? You shouldn't need those particular drivers otherwise. You should be able to load Windows to your OS HDD and then install the drivers for the RAID controllers later in the process, after you have installed Windows.



COLGeek:

I finally got the drivers extracted on the new 3.5" floppy--how I got it to work I don't know. Drivers installed just fine. The on hard drive still isn't recognized.

I took out the cage and popped the drive into my Win 7 64 gaming rig. I could hear it power right up although this system didn't recognize it either.

Is there a way to copy the MBR from one of my other data drives to this drive? I think this may be easier just to RMA. Please advise.

Thanks again for your patience and help.

Jeff
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