KGPE-D16 System Error

Thanks!
Did finally get a response from ASUS and was told exactly the same thing.. Indeed it was both of the video cards I tried. The on board VGA did work as you suggested. My confusion here was caused by not finding out that this one long beep - three short beeps error was a video error because I found info online about this being an AMI BIOS memory error. I will have to check out the pcguide.com website. If I find a compatible video card I will update this thread.

After a few missteps I am up & running. I initially tried to do 4 RAID 1 arrays. Due to the limitation of the ASUS PIKE 2008 you can only create 2 arrays. If I created 2 arrays I was dealing with a 3TB array & a 4TB array. Again due to the limitation of the ASUS PIKE 2008 I could only create 1 GPT partition per array. Though Windows 2K8 R2 will read GPT partitions it will not install to one.

I abandoned the ASUS PIKE 2008 limitations and installed a Highpoint 2720 8 port controller. The Highpoint controller allows each array to be subdivided 4 times. If my memory serves me correctly the Highpoint 2720 is limited to 2 arrays as well. I was going to try to take advantage of the port multiplier capability of the Highpoint 2720 but instead decided to go with RAID 5 arrays and that driver is incompatible with the port multiplier capability. Either one or the other.

In Windows Disk Management it appears that there are seven hard drives.
The 4.5TB array contains three 745GB drives with 4 186GB primary partitions for operating systems per drive and one 1956GB drive with one 732GB partition for local shared programs, one 1074GB drive for local shared data and one 149GB drive for the local swapfile & temporary files. The 6.0TB array contains three 1862GB drives for network data.

This system is an upgrade of a Supermicro H8DCE I have been using for about 5 years with a Highpoint 2320 8 port controller that had a seven x 750GB RAID 5 array (one broken port on the 2320) for a total drive capacity of of 4.5 TB that was in need of both drive replacement and extra capacity along with a Windows installation that was randomly locking up and requiring reboot due to either impending drive failure or general Windows disease.

I would not recommend the PIKE 2008 card for large arrays due to the limitations listed above. I am using it for JBOD. The LIAN LI PC-P80 EATX case I am using has 12 front accessible 5.25 drive bays with three iStarUSA BPN-DE340SS SAS/SATA 6GBS 4in3 tool free backplanes (12 3.5 SATA drives), one 2in1 2.5" SATA tool free backplane, 3 ICY Dock rear accessible power+sata connectors that are working and four rear accessible SATA ports that I am having difficulty with, probably due to cable length, trying to connect to an external 6 bay Cool Gear SATA case that has three 2x2 SATA or 1x2 USB centronics style Cool Gear modules. The USB connectors still work however.

Also back to the video card. I was able to get the EVGA 01G-P3-N959-TR GeForce 9500 GT to work by using a different PCI-E x16 slot. I think that it was a conflict with the other cards on board. The PCI-E x16/MIO slot will turn off if another PCI-E x16 slot is occupied and one PCI-E x16 slot will auto switch to an x8 link if another PCI-E x16 slot is occupied. I am not sure if the MIO sound card will still work in that PCI-E x16/MIO slot if the other PCI-E x16 slot is occupied. The manual is not quite clear about this.

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