Dell PowerEdge 1600SC SCSI not found

[LadyGrey]

PowerEdge 1600SC Dell http://support.dell.com/support/topi...icetag=47RNM21
This is the page that shows the original computer. It has not been changed. It has also not been serviced or looked at in 8 years.
Running Windows 2000 Server
Two SCSI Seagate drives, one or both making a bad noise.
The following is what comes up in BIOS:
LSI Logic 1020/1030C Syn 320.0 Wide 16 Rev 1032300 202]
PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller BIOS 3.29
HA-0 (Bus1 Dev2)
PERC 3/SC Standard FW 1.80 DRAM 32MB
After the LSI Logic 1020/1030C Syn 320.0 Wide 16 Rev 1032300 202]
is shown a message comes up and says
MPT boot ROM No supported devices found!
I then get a prompt to F1 continue or F2 enter setup.

Just this morning most of that was coming up, all except the part about No supported devices found and if I hit F1 it would continue and would boot.
The only thing and I mean the only thing that I did was to run the Dell Diagnostics from the partition on the disk. After that it finds no supported devices and won't boot.
What did I do and how do I undo it?
Thanks,
LG

[saphalline]

The specs you linked show only a single 36GB U320 SCSI hard drive:

"1 4R424 HD,36GB,SCSI,U320,10K,68P,FJT"

If the system indeed has not ever been upgraded or touched since it was originally assembled and purchased, then the bad noise is coming from the one and only HDD in the system. That would explain the error!

[LadyGrey]

Thank you Saph for your help. It does indeed have the two drives and I made a mistake, they are fugitsu SCSI drives.
It could be that when they had the computer built they had the extra drive put in, I'll have to ask.
All I know is it still won't boot, and I've been up all night looking and searching and reading, trying to find some answers. So far no luck.
If the drives or one of them has gone, is there any way to get at the data on it and get it off?
thanks,
LG

[Sylvander]

1 2H794 CRD,CTL,PERC3-SC,PCI/S,32MB

Gathering info:
AMI/LSI Controllers
PERC 3/SC
SC = Single Channel

Dell also sells a number of RAID cards or ROMBs which use the LSI (formerly AMI) MegaRAID driver which is part of the stock 2.2.x and 2.4.x kernels.
ROMB Types
PERC3/SC - single-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI

Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller 3/QC, 3/DC, 3/DCL and 3/SC Firmware Update.

Megaraid SCSI
Add-in Types
PERC3/SC - single-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI

So is this an add-in RAID card including a ["Single Channel" = SC] SCSI controller for SCSI HDD's?

"I then get a prompt....F2 enter setup"
Is this the ordinary mobo BIOS [not the SCSI card's BIOS] telling you to go into the BIOS Setup because the configuration settings are probably mis-configured, and need to be corrected.
Is the BIOS no longer configured to boot to the device[s] on the SCSI controller?

[LadyGrey]

Hi Syl, Thanks so much for all your work in looking all that up for me.
From what I can tell the two SCSI drives are hooked by a cable to a card in what looks to me like an old ISA slot but it isn't. From my reading it's some kind of super duper PCI slot I think.
The F2 takes me into system BIOS for the computer. I had read about the card having it's own BIOS but I have no idea how to get into them and it is maybe better that I don't I wouldn't know what I was looking at if I got there any way.
The system BIOS tell me:
Boot Sequence:
CD ROM
Hard Disk C:
Diskette Drive A
All are enabled and in that order.
Hard Disk Drive Sequence:
1. Slot1: PERC 3/SC Adapter (bus 01 dev 02)
2. System BIOS boot devices.
They are in that order.
I will look at all your links and see if there is something there that will make any sense to me.
Thanks again!
LG

[jlreich]

If it hasn't been serviced for 8 years the first thing to do is replace the CMOS battery. If the SCSI card has a battery replace it as well.

Is the BIOS no longer configured to boot to the device[s] on the SCSI controller?

That's my first thoughts and one reason I say replace the CMOS battery. Or worst case the SCSI card has died. Also try reseating the SCSI card. It could simply be a case of chip creep.

If the SCSI card is functional you should see a message at some point during POST for a hotkey to enter the SCSI controller BIOS.

If you can get everything functional you should be able to get things going. Hopefully you won't have to do anything with the SCSI controller and it's just a matter of reseating the card and/or replacing batteries.

[Paul Komski]

CTRL + M should take you into the PERC RAID controller settings during boot-up. One or both drives may then be visible. It is important that SCSI devices are properly terminated apart from anything else. One or both drives may have failed or an array could have been broken or the incorrect drive could be marked as the active drive.

Currently the boot order is CD, SCSI card, IDE Hard Drive and Floppy.

Can you boot to a CD. If not that is indicative of possible hardware failure/malconfiguration of one sort or another so the next diagnostic thing to do would be to see if you could boot to a CD with the RAID card temporarily pulled out.

[LadyGrey]

JL wouldn't pulling the CMOS battery even long enough to replace it cause what settings are there to be wiped out? I can not lose the data on these things. My ideal is to get the darn thing to boot and make images, three or four, I'm to the point I may make 6!! They have one backup, but no images, just some files.

Paul and Syl Thank you both very much for the articles, very informative. If it really is something as simple as some of this suggests I will be so happy and relieved. I'm not so sure about the card getting unseated, the server itself wasn't moved and was booting fine until I ran those Dell diagnostics from their own utility partition, maybe it was just loose enough that a reboot vibrated it just enough to lose contact. I'll take a look. I will try the boot to CD also and see what happens.

Does this type of setup have a specific order that the drives have to be hooked up in on the cable itself? How do you tell one drive from the other?
Thanks so much for all the help.
LG

[jlreich]

JL wouldn't pulling the CMOS battery even long enough to replace it cause what settings are there to be wiped out? I can not lose the data on these things

Actually if you leave the system plugged in while swapping it out it shouldn't clear any settings in the BIOS, but I can't guarantee it.The SCSI card would probably need to be removed to change it, so it would lose power and clear the settings, if it does indeed have a battery.

One way to approach it is to go in and write down settings in the BIOS and in the SCSI card BIOS just in case. Which you should do anyway if this is a case of bad settings and you end up going in and changing things to try and get the drives recognized by the system.

If you are not confident then it's probably best to leave it alone right now and pursue getting the data off the drives first.

Though it doesn't necessarily help you or your customer right now I am surprised whoever setup the server didn't setup a real disaster recovery plan. Drives and controller cards do die. If the business is big enough to have a real server then they are big enough to have a true disaster recovery plan including images and data backups. Also very important is documentation of BIOS and SCSI settings and of course disaster recovery procedures.

I once went to an Air Force base gas station to do a simple upgrade of adding a Gb NIC to their server since they were soon moving to a Gb network. The SCSI drives decided at that moment to take a dive. Worse, their backup server was also down and had been for weeks. The entire store was down for most of the day while we waited for the drives to arrive onsite and then them doing disaster recovery. But most of the day was far better then days or longer.

[Paul Komski]

Does this type of setup have a specific order that the drives have to be hooked up in on the cable itself? How do you tell one drive from the other?

With drives attached to a SCSI/RAID controller then the Card is what the main BIOS selects as the boot device and the Controller's own BIOS set which is the boot drive or the boot array if an array has been created.

If the card only lists one visible drive there is a problem with one of the drives.

Taking out the card and re-seating it shouldn't affect its settings as regards the hard drive configurations since the information is written and held in a database at the end of both of the hard drives in question. At least that has always been my experience. I used to imagine that the configs were stored in the card's own firmware whereas the info was actually stored on the hard drives themselves.

If one drive fails in a RAID configuration then the card should detect that (because one database is absent or corrupt) and warn you that the array is broken. This isn't happening and it sounds like only one (but maybe both or neither) of the two drives is being recognised. If one drive is being correctly detected it is unlikely that re-seating the PCI card will make any difference - though stranger things have happened. We need to know what the card's controllers' BIOS/Firmware actually sees.

PS

Does this type of setup have a specific order that the drives have to be hooked up in on the cable itself? How do you tell one drive from the other?

I've already indicated the answer but just to be clear. The order of devices in a SCSI chain is not important. The card and the two drives, at the moment should complete that daisy-chain there being thus three SCSI IDs. The last device in the chain must be properly "terminated" with a special connector. The order in the daisy chain is not critical and the controllers on the card and the databases on the drives should be able to make sense of everything if the hardware and power and connections are all good. Each drive as well as having a SCSI ID will have a unique serial number "imprinted" onto its MBR thus allowing all hardware to identify any specific hard drive regardless of its SCSI ID.

[Sylvander]

"shouldn't affect its settings as regards the hard drive configurations since the information is written and held in a database at the end of both of the hard drives in question"
Could that info on the HDD's have been corrupted during/by the diagnostic tests that were run?

What is the ...
QUOTE
MPT boot ROM ["No supported devices found!"]

[Paul Komski]

One step at a time I suggest. What we need to know first of all is whether the drives are or can be recoginsed by the SCSI card's firmware. If a drive is not recognised by the system then nothing is likely to have been written to it. The data at the end of the drive would normally only be overwritten by a RAID/SCSI host controller or by wiping the complete drive surface.

MPT boot ROM ["No supported devices found!"]

I think that is the firmware of the SCSI card. Firmware that has no supported devices, which is again why we need to know what the card is seeing.

[LadyGrey]

I have had an interesting evening and have possibly made things even worse. I was so sick about this that I called a Tech. figuring that he would know how to deal with this. He came and went through the card BIOS, the system BIOS, all the cables and the whole setup of the computer. He said the drives were both online and were being seen in the SCSI BIOS. He tried taking the cable off of one drive to see what would happen, same thing happened, then put that back on and took off the connection from the other drive and the same thing happened. Then he put both cables back on and booted and the computer started screaming!!
A new message came up that said "1 logical drive has degraded"!!! That was not there before!!!
He said it had tried to boot and there was a huge error and that's what the alarm was, the drive put itself into self protection mode. He said he really thought the drives were good as they spin up and the lights are green and flashing, but this was before the computer started screaming.
He said he was really stumped and just couldn't think of anything else to do. He did say it was possible to get the data off but didn't tell me how! So after he left I tried booting again and it comes up like it has been but then the alarm starts going off, it still continues on and I can get into BIOS and the Dell Partition but I shut it down right after I saw I could at least still do that.

Paul, it will boot to a CD with the card pulled out. I tested it just now.
I'm afraid to really turn it on again with that alarm sounding so I don't have any idea which drive has degraded, or why or what the devil to do about it. Also the SCSI card does not have a battery and I haven't changed out the CMOS battery yet but will here shortly.

I asked him if maybe the MBR has gotten messed up and that was the error, he didn't know. I asked him if maybe running a repair process would help since everything thing else was right, maybe it was windows itself, he didn't know.
For heaven sake I think I knew more than he did, or else he just thought I was stupid and didn't want to tell me that so he just said he didn't know, and I paid him $60 bucks!!
LG

[LadyGrey]

Forgot to mention one thing. I had told him what I had done about running the Dell diagnostics and he ran them too just like I did and after the cables that he connected and disconnected that 's when the computer started with the alarm.
LG

[Paul Komski]

My own best guess is that the drives were configured into some sort of RAID and that the array has been "broken" by corruption or failure of one of the drives. If that was a RAID0 then you are probably SOL as far as data recovery is concerned but if RAID1 then each drive would be a mirror with a normal FS.

If the drives or one of them has gone, is there any way to get at the data on it and get it off?

Is that your main concern or is it to just get a functioning OS or to get back a product key or something like that.

At this stage I would try booting to a Knoppix CD and just see if it can see any of the drives or partitions on the drives. Just run fdisk with the lowercase L switch from a root command prompt.
fdisk -l
or
sudo fdisk -l
and see what it finds - if anything.

If it fails to boot with the card in-situ then I guess there is true hardware failure of the card or one or both drives. At least try the card in another slot and with both drives combined or individually added to the card and with no drives attached to see if we can pin down a "screaming" culprit.

For heaven sake I think I knew more than he did

I would say you probably would. I have a hearty disrespect for most of the travelling techs that have "helped" clients of my own - even though they are usually bright know-it-all types.

Finally. You may need to bite the bullet and not only swap in a new CMOS battery but also deliberately reset the BIOS to failsafe defaults and reconfigure if necessary.

[LadyGrey]

Thank you Paul for your help!
I put in a new CMOS battery and the card is back in place but I haven't turned anything on yet.
I am downloading Knoppix now.
Questions, If the system BIOS will not "see" the drives then could they be seen on any OS at all, or is that how SCSI drives are, not seen by system BIOS? Wouldn't running fdisk wipe out the data? I still get confused between fdisk and chkdsk even after all these years.
1.My primary concern is the Data. This place has put all it's eggs in one basket so to speak. They have no Disaster Recovery Plan, they may have long ago but didn't or couldn't afford to keep it up. They have no image just some of the files are backed up.
2.I would love to be able to have the computer boot to it's normal OS and all be well.
3.I don't need keys or anything, there is a valid Server 2000 key on the computer itself.
If worse comes to worst and I have to learn how to reconfigure this thing will that wipe out the data?
Thank you so much.
LG

[Paul Komski]

If the system BIOS will not "see" the drives then could they be seen on any OS at all, or is that how SCSI drives are, not seen by system BIOS? The main BIOS sees the card and can select it as a boot device. After that it depends on the OS as to whether it listens to the BIOS or polls stuff for itself. As long as the OS has the drivers for the card and can re-poll the hardware it will detect the card, its drives and any arrays. This is typically what the NT OSes like WinXP and the Linux Distros like Knoppix do.

Wouldn't running fdisk wipe out the data?Linux fdisk and DOS fdisk are two separate entities. Even DOS fdisk doesn't automatically delete partitions and can simply look at configurations. The linux fdisk -l simply lists all visible partitions and drives.

If worse comes to worst and I have to learn how to reconfigure this thing will that wipe out the data? Only writing stuff to the drives will wipe out data. If the data is critical enough then take the drives to a professional. Simply entering the card's BIOS should be safe but don't create or add to or delete any existing arrays etc. Just cancel your way out or turn the PC off.

Similar with Knoppix; have a look for now but try to find out if the drives can be detected. Back out if unsure. If detectable there are a number of ways to attempt data recovery.

[LadyGrey]

Paul my friend, I have packed it in. I called them and told them that this was way beyond me and I did not want to do any more damage than what was already going on. I put the side back on it and Donnie and I took it up to them, I told them that like it or not they were going to have to call in an expert. I told them what all of you have told me and that the data should be ok but not to get their hopes up.
They were very very nice and thanked me for trying.
I thank all of you my friends for trying to help and for being there when I needed you. If nothing else I have learned some things and I try hard to never miss an opportunity to learn something new.
Many many thanks to all of you!!
LG

[saphalline]

Awww, I missed it!

Pity, too. It looked like "fun"!