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Troubleshooting: FastTrak100 Ultra ATA/100 RAID Card User's Guide
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Troubleshooting: FastTrak100™ Ultra ATA/100 RAID Card
User's Guide
Introduction
• Motherboard Issues • System CMOS Issues • Drive-Related
Errors • Operating System
Errors • Getting Help
This section is used to assist with
troubleshooting conflicts and FastTrak100 installation problems.Also
refer to the "README.TXT" file on the FastTrak100 driver and utility diskette
for more recent information.
The section is divided into the following
categories: Motherboard Issues, System
CMOS Issues, Drive Errors, and Operating
System Errors.
| Problem |
Cause |
Solution |
| FastTrak100
is not recognized or system hangs on bootup. |
FastTrak100
IRQ conflicts with another device. |
Since the Promise card supports
PCI Interrupt sharing, it is possible to use IRQs already assigned to
another PCI add-in card. Interrupt Sharing is not supported by onboard
IDE controllers. If onboard IDE controller(s) are not used, you may
disable the controllers to free IRQ 14 and/or 15.
Setting the IRQ for a particular
PCI slot will be different depending on the motherboard BIOS. This setting
is usually made in the PCI Configuration and/or Plug and Play (PnP)
section of the motherboard BIOS setup.
There are three common methods
that motherboard BIOS use to handle assignment of IRQs to PCI slots:
- Specifically assigning
an IRQ to a particular slot - You can tell the motherboard to use
IRQ 10 for PCI slot 1, IRQ 11 for PCI slot 2, etc.
- Listing which IRQs are
available to be assigned to the PCI slots - This BIOS has an option
where you specify "1st Available IRQ", "2nd Available IRQ", etc. The
BIOS then scans the PCI slots for PCI cards and assigns these IRQs
in the order that it finds the PCI cards.
- Excluding an IRQ from
being used by a PCI slot - If you have an ISA card that is using an
IRQ, change the setting for this particular IRQ from "Available" to
"used by ISA card" so that the motherboard will not assign this IRQ
to a PCI slot.
Consult your motherboard
manual for information that is specific to your motherboard.
|
| System
locks up during bootup or when Windows starts |
There
may be a possible IRQ conflict with an ISA card. |
Identify
what IRQs are used by ISA cards, enter the Mainboard PCI Setup, and reserve
the IRQ for use with ISA. PCI slots cannot share IRQs with ISA cards. |
| Intermittent
data problems |
Motherboard
may have been overclocked. |
Do
not exceed the 33Mhz PCI Bus speed. Systems set to higher than default
settings can exceed these limitations and cause intermittent boot and
data problems. |
| Problem |
Cause |
Solution |
| Cannot
boot from FastTrak array. |
Mainboard
CMOS Boot sequence is not configured properly and/or an onboard IDE controller
exists. |
In Dell PCs, set the "Hard-Disk
Drive Sequence" of the CMOS as follows:
1) System BIOS Boot device
2) FastTrak RAID Controller
Make sure the Boot Sequence
CMOS setting includes "Hard-Disk Drive C:"
|
| Mainboard
CMOS displays C: or D: drive failure during startup |
|
See
Drive-Related Errors. |
| Problem |
Cause |
Solution |
| Critical
Array Status Error Reported during Boot |
If
a critical status error message appears on the FastTrak100 BIOS startup
screen for a mirrored array (see Figure 1), there
is a drive in the array which has failed or is not responding. |
FastTrak100 will identify the
failed drive by channel number and Master/Slave designation (if 2 drives
exist on the same cable). The mirrored array has lost its fault tolerance,
but will still perform normal drive reads and writes.
Try powering the system off
and on to reset the drive. Also confirm that cables are properly attached
and the drive is receiving power. If the drive still appears to have failed,
proceed to Rebuild Array option of FastCheck.
|
| Drive
cannot be formed into an array. |
Drive
does not support UDMA or multi-word DMA or is defective. |
Drives
must support Ultra DMA or Multi-word DMA and be free of media defects to
be added into an array. Promise recommends using new identical drives for
each array. Re-secure data and power cabling while checking for proper alignment.
Typically, Pin 1 of the drive is closest to the power connector. |
| Intermittent
data errors or poor drive performance |
Possible
Master/Slave problems |
Master/slave
problems may exist between two ATA or IDE drives of different brands attached
to a single cable. For both compatibility and better performance, choose
drives of the same model/brand and install them on separate cables. |
| System
CMOS displays C: or D: drive failure during Startup |
System
CMOS directly refers to hard drive(s) attached to FastTrak100 card as C:
or D: drive. |
Do
not reference C: or D: in the Mainboard Standard CMOS for drives attached
to the FastTrak100 controller. Only enter drive information in the Mainboard
CMOS for drives attached to a conventional add-on or onboard IDE controller. |
| FDISK
reports a much lower drive capacity if a single physical drive or a striped
array exceeds 64GB |
Due
to a limitation with FDISK, the utility reports only the storage capacity
that exceeds 64GB. This is a cosmetic, not actual, limitation. |
Simply
create a single DOS drive partition, reboot, then format the partition.
The Format command will recognize the total capacity of the partition accurately.
Windows NT4/2000/98 will now recognize the total capacity of your array.
|
| Unable
to partition or format array |
The Reserve Sector of one of
the drives has become corrupt or bad. Removing the Reserve Sector will
remedy any issue related directly to a Bad Reserve Sector.
|
 WARNING:
Before removing the Reserve Sector of the drive(s), backup any existing
data. Removal of the reserve sector of any drive permanently deletes all
existing data on the hard drive. For Mirrored arrays (RAID 1), you should
remove the Reserve Sector from the "mirrored" drive first (this will appear
during Step 3 below) then rebuild the mirrored array. Remove the Sector
on the Master Drive only as a last resort. For Striped arrays (RAID 0),
removing the Reserve Sector from any of the drives that are striped will
destroy the arrayed data.
To remove the Reserve Sector,
follow these steps:
- When the FastTrak100 BIOS
comes up, press Crtl-F to enter the FastBuild.
- Press 2 to "View Drive Assignments".
- Using the arrow keys, highlight
the drive where you wish to remove the reserve sector.
- Press ALT-F1. The highlighted
drive will start blinking on the screen.
- Press CTRL-TAB. A message
will appear that says the reserved sector (which is where array information
is kept) on the disk will be wiped.
- Press "Y" to confirm.
- For a mirrored arrays, hit
the "ESC" key twice to reboot and skip to step 10.
- For striped arrays, repeat
this process for each member of the particular array that is having
a problem.
- When finished, hit the "ESC"
key twice to reboot.
- After rebooting, use FastBuild
to re-create the array. For mirrored arrays, rebuild the mirrored array.
For striped arrays, use FDISK and FORMAT after setting up the array.
|
| Fatal
Errors or Data Corruption Are Constantly Reported When Reading or Writing
to Drive Array |
The
Reserve Sector of one of the drives has become corrupt or bad. |
See
"Unable to Partition or Format array" above |
| Cannot
Rebuild Mirrored (RAID 1) Array |
The
Reserve Sector of one of the drives has become corrupt or bad. |
See
"Unable to Partition or Format array" above |
| Array
Constantly Goes Into Critical or Offline Mode During Reboot |
The
Reserve Sector of one of the drives has become corrupt or bad. |
See
"Unable to Partition or Format array" above |
| An
ECC Error Reported on Rebuild window has appeared (see Figure
2) under FastCheck. |
The
On Errors Notification setting is on "Interactive"
within FastCheck's Options Window and a data
error has been detected on either the source or target drive during Rebuild. |
Your choices are as follows:
Abort: Halts the rebuild
process. You may elect to retry at a later date.
Break ECC on Target Drive:
If the error is detected on the source drive, "Break ECC on Target Drive"
means that FastTrak will copy the bad data sector on to the target drive
to assure that both drives are identical. If the error is detected on
the target drive, FastCheck will copy the data contained in the good sector
of the source drive again to the target drive.
Skip the Error Block:
FastTrak100 will log the event error and continue the rebuild process.
Use this setting if you want to detect the presence of errors, but do
not want to fix these errors at the time. You may then decide what to
do about the error(s) detected.
|
| An
ECC Error Reported on Synchronize window has appeared (see Figure
3) under FastCheck |
The
screen will appear if a data error is detected on either source or target
drive during Synchronization if you have set the On Errors setting to "Interactive"
within FastCheck's Options Window for Scheduled Synchronization
or for Manual Synchronization under Notification
options. |
Your choices are as follows:
Abort: Halts the synchronization
process. You may elect to retry at a later date.
Fix the Error Block:
FastTrak100 will take a good data block from either drive and copy it
to the drive where the error was detected.
Skip the Error Block:
FastTrak100 will log the event error and continue the synchronization
process. Use this setting if you want to detect the presence of errors,
but do not want to fix these errors at the time. You may then decide what
to do about the error(s) detected.
|
Figure 1. FastBuild
Error Detection
|
Operation aborted because FastBuild encountered an error
as follows:
Location: Channel 2 - Master Drive
Array Status: Critical
Please retry using FastCheck utility to recover all data. Reboot the
system by pressing the ENTER key.
|
Figure 2. ECC
Error on Rebuild
Figure 3. ECC
Error on Synchronize
| Problem |
Cause |
Solution |
| Different
drive lettering under Windows NT |
This
may happen when using a SCSI card in addition to the Promise card. |
Windows NT does not necessarily
load the driver for the boot device controller first. This results in
a drive that in MS-DOS is the C: drive being the D:, or E:, etc. in Windows
NT.
Use Windows NT's Disk Administrator
utility to reassign the letters which NT has assigned to the drives. See
your Windows NT documentation for instructions on how to use Disk Administrator.
|
| The
Operating System no longer boots after creating a Mirrored Array using your
existing boot drive using Windows NT4 or Windows 2000 |
This
is due to Drive Geometry issues. You can verify this if you move the original
drive back to the onboard controller and it boots.Each controller can view
a drive differently. This can be an issue for a new controller which loads
the original Master Boot Record (MBR) and then has a problem translating
it or the Operating System boot record. |
For
Windows NT or Windows 2000, Promise recommends a "clean" install of the
Operating System. This restores the MBR and OS boot record. You will then
need to repartition and format the drive. |
| Promise
Windows driver does not appear in Device Manager |
Windows
may already be listing the controller under "Other Devices" instead of "Hard
disk controllers" section. |
In Device Manager under "Other
Devices" check to see if it lists a "PCI Card", or "RAID Controller."
If so, highlight this listing and click on the "Properties" button, and
then click on the "Driver" tab.
Depending on your version of
Windows, choose either "Change Driver" or "Update Driver". Then follow
the on-screen prompts to complete installation of the driver. If Windows
asks if you want to test if the device can be removed safely click on
"CANCEL. Reboot the system to complete installation of the driver.
|
| While
booting Windows NT or 2000 during a floppyless install (see "Installing
Windows NT 4.0 Driver" or "Installing Windows
2000 Driver"), the message "Inaccessible Boot Device" appears. |
The
"F6" key was not pressed at the appropriate time. |
Reboot
the system, and press the "F6" key when the message "Setup is inspecting
your computer's hardware configuration
" appears in Windows NT4 or the message
"Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver" appears
in Windows 2000. |
| While
booting Windows NT or 2000 during a CD-ROM disk install (see "Installing
Windows NT 4.0 Driver" or "Installing Windows
2000 Driver"), the message "No Hard Drives Found" appears. |
The
"F6" key was not pressed at the appropriate time. |
Reboot
the system, and press the "F6" key when the message "Setup is inspecting
your computer's hardware configuration
" appears in Windows NT4 or the message
"Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver" appears
in Windows 2000. |
Additional tips and troubleshooting instructions are available
on the Promise Technology, Inc. Web site (www.promise.com).
If the troubleshooting procedures in this document do not resolve the problem,
please contact Dell Computer Corporation for technical assistance (refer to
the Getting Help section in your system documentation). For information about
your Dell warranty, see your Dell system documentation.
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