Upgraded setup, won't boot with Adaptec card

[PsyVision]

Hi All,

 

Not sure this is strictly the best place to put this but it's a hardware issue alone (doesn't involve unRAID).

 

My unRAID server has been working fine and I decided to upgrade it from an AMD Semperon based system.  I've installed the following:

 

Intel i3 6100T

Gigabyte GA-Z170-D3H Micro ATX

Corsair Vengeance 4x4GB RAM

 

This setup will boot fine on it's own.

 

However, if I put my Adaptec 1430sa card (with two hard drives attached) into either the PCIeX16 or X4 slot it will boot and the card's BIOS will sit there looking for the drives forever and the system never boots properly.

 

I used the Adaptec card with my old setup okay (i.e. had adjusted the BIOS on it to be in normal SATA mode not RAID).

 

Any ideas?

 

Thanks,

Rich

 

[stchas]

Try disabling the BIOS on the Adaptec card: Diable Adaptec BIOS

[PsyVision]

I read about disabling it last night but couldnt try it for a couple of reasons.  I rebooted this morning and whacked Ctrl+A a whole load and got nothing, tried to hold it for the boot process and still got nothing - had to leave for work but will try again tonight!

 

Thanks!

[garycase]

There may be a compatibility issue between the card's BIOS and your new system.  Put the card in another (older) system and disable the card's BIOS (Ctrl-A and then disable it) ... and then move it back to the new system and see if it works okay.

 

[garycase]

.... Also, are your 1430's running the latest firmware?    (v2507)

 

If not, create a bootable USB flash drive (you can use Rufus to do this), and put the 2507 firmware on it; and then flash the card to this version (do this while it's in an older system as well).

 

Note that if were already using drives > 2TB on the card, it already has that firmware, as it's required for support of the larger drives.

 

[PsyVision]

Hi Gary,

 

I hadn't seen your message until now when I started to look back at this.  I logged onto my server and it was doing a parity sync at 3.8MB/s which is painfully slow.  When booting the server it spends 10 minutes looking for a disk in each of the 4 slots and then eventually boots.  Holding (and ramming) Ctrl + A doesn't allow me to get into the menu. 

 

I suspect there must be some sort of compatibility issue as this card has worked fine previously.  I'm not too fussed on fixing it as I have ordered a SATA3 card to replace it (as this is SATA2).  If someone else is searching and has an issue then try what Gary says