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Expanding the capacity of a server by adding

new disk drives is a typical activity for
administrator. In this article, let us review how to
add two new disk drives to the DELL server and
create RAID 1 using “Dell PowerEdge
Expandable RAID Controller – PERC”
configuration utility. This tool is also called as
“PERC/CERC Bios Configuration Utility”.

If you are using the latest DELL Servers, please refer to the article that explains how to create
RAID on PERC 6/i Integrated BIOS Configuration Utility.

1. Launch PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility. C O U R S E

Insert the two new disk drives onto the empty slots available on the server and reboot. During Linux Sysadmin CentOS 6 Course - Master the Tools,
Configure it Right, and be Lazy
the system startup, press Ctrl+M to launch the PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller BIOS
Configuration Utility.
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2. Go to Configure -> View/Add Configuration Nagios Core 3 eBook - Monitor Everything, Be
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Using the arrow keys, select the Configure option from the main menu and “View/Add
Configuration” option from the Configure menu as shown below.

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3. Status of the new disk drives 50 UNIX / Linux Sysadmin Tutorials

The “View/Add Configuration” menu item, will display all disk drives on the system along with 50 Most Frequently Used UNIX / Linux Commands
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Use arrow key and select the first drive with READY status and press space bar, which will
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blinking at this stage.
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Ramesh Natarajan
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5. Configure the disk drives

Press F10 to continue the configuration of two selected disk drives. This will display the Array
configuration screen as shown below. The array number A02 number that got assigned for the
new disk drives from the previous step, is displayed here.

Press space bar which will display the Span-1 message in the A02 text area as shown
below.
Press F10 to continue the configuration to the next step.

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6. Select RAID Level.
Pressing F10 from the above screen, will display the RAID configuration screen as shown
below.

Use the arrow keys to select RAID 1 and press enter.

Use arrow keys to scroll down, select Accept and press enter to save the configurations.

The advanced menu in the above screen has the following options. I suggest that you don’t
change this and leave it to the default values.

Stripe Size: 2KB, 4KB, 8KB, 16KB, 32KB, 64KB (default value) or 128 KB.
Write Policy: WRBACK (default value) or WRTHRU
Read Policy: NO_READAHEAD, READAHEAD or ADAPTIVE (default value)
Cache Policy: Cached IO or Direct IO (default value)

After saving the configuration, reboot the system. Logical Volume 02 is now configured as
RAID1 using the two new disk drives and ready for use.

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Tags: CERC, dell, PERC

{ 75 comments… read them below or add one }

Ajith Edassery July 30, 2008 at 3:48 am 1

Very useful information. Thought, you are talking about the server config, I guess the
process will be applicable to high end desktops as well? (apart from BIOS tools). I am
planning to go on RAID 1 for better fault tolerance – really lost some data a couple of weeks
back, following a crash

Ajith

Renjith July 30, 2008 at 11:00 pm 2

This is a great post inded.I will book mark it for sure. I have configured the Raid in Windows.
Even the Raid 1 is the best for mirroring data.

Last year I was In a situation were I wanted to backup all my data as my pc was crashing
most of the time. So I thought to configure the raid 1, but when later I come to know that its
always feasible if you setup a NAS box. There are many reason I go for the NAS

I had 4 pcs in my home network and I can keep the NAS as a central backup point. Lately I
had only 250 GB in my NAS box but recently I have added one more 250 GB.

I have used my a p3 desktop to setup NAS box

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Mark Simpson August 1, 2008 at 6:22 am 3

good, Clear insight into PERC configuration on Dell servers. Please be aware there is now a
new RAID bios that comes with dell adaptors look a bit different but essentially does the
same job.

Mark Hoff August 23, 2008 at 1:10 pm 4

I second Mark’s comment above.

I’ve just completed the buildout of 450 Dell R900 servers this week in four of our datacenters.
The newer PERC setup (which is what ships with PERC 6 controllers) is still sourced by Dell
from LSI. You use Ctrl+R to enter the PERC setup now.

The user interface has three screens (or tabs if you want to think of them that way). One that
shows a tree or list view of the storage groups/logical volumes/physical disks. A second that
shows a status view of the storage groups (online/offline). And a third that shows controller
details–and from which you can upgrade the controller firmware.

Ron Fed November 15, 2008 at 12:36 pm 5

This is a wonderful post and just what I needed and was searching for. I am running a Dell
PE2800 server with 2 360GB drives in RAID1. These drives are partitioned in the standard
C, D configuration with the large D partition containing an expanding searchable database.

After installing two new RAID 1 drives with the help of this post, can I extend the D Partition
on the original drives to include the new drives? Any comments or suggestions will be very
much appreciated.

Ron Fed November 18, 2008 at 9:04 am 6

I see no mention of formatting in the original post or follow up comments. Do the new disks
have to be formatted, or is that done after that are attached in the RAID configuration?

Comments or suggestions much appreciated.

Ramesh November 26, 2008 at 2:39 pm 7

Ron,

After you’ve completed the hardware RAID configuration, from the Linux OS, you can use
fdisk for partitioning and mk2fs to create ext3 filesystem.

Barney November 27, 2008 at 3:13 pm 8

Ramesh,

Great article! I’ve been fighting with my PE2800 trying to install a second raid 1 array on top
of the existing raid 1 array, just as you have described.

My two new Seagate Cheetah drives show 0mb as well as 32 media errors in the PERC raid
bios and although they are ‘ready’ they cannot be put online.

I think I need to format them before I can add them. Fdisk will only see online drives … any
suggestions how to format these drives?

Sunny January 16, 2009 at 11:04 am 9

Hi Ramesh,

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Will you please share some tips or tricks to test/verify that RAID 1 actually configure and
working properly?

I have few question’s for you Will really aprrecate if you answer of them or publish some
artical on base of them.

1. 1) How to recover data in case 1 HDD fail/crash from RAID1?

2. 2) How to repair HDD in case of fail/crash from RAID1?
3. 3) How to monitor and get email alert if HDD fail/crash from RAID1?
4. 4) How to replace Small storage HDD from RAID1 to Large Storage capacity HDD without
lossing data?
5. 5) How to migrate data from RAID1 to some other remote server?
6. 6) How to Test RAID1 in different way?

korben April 8, 2009 at 3:04 pm 10

I have not the same Configure interface => CTRL + R for me not M…
Why i cant CTRL + M ?

Ramesh April 10, 2009 at 3:45 pm 11

@Barney,

You should try the following from the PERC/CERC Configuration Utility menu.

1. Objects -> Logical Drive -> Logical Drive 1 (or whatever the number) -> Check
Consistency

Note: You may want to do an initialize also here.

2. Objects -> Physical Drive -> ONLINE A00-00 (or whatever the number) -> Rebuild

@Sunny,

Excellent questions. Those questions definitely deserves a separate article. I’ve add that to
my list of things to do.

BTW, it is very easy to test a RAID 1 configuration. Just pull-out one of the drives that
belongs to the RAID Group. Now, the whole logical volume should be in de-graded state. If
your raid 1 is configured properly, this should not cause any service disruption at the
operating system level.

@Korben,

That depends on your controller. What type of dell server is that? I need to check on a latest
dell server to see whether it is still Ctrl – M (or) probably it is changed to Ctrl – R on the new
server.

AfrAth May 2, 2009 at 12:20 am 12

Thanks

Arul May 2, 2009 at 3:16 am 13

Ramesh,
Thanks for your motive and willing to help each and other.nice to meet you .Could i get any
link or guide how to retrieve data from raid 1+0 .

Jhon July 7, 2009 at 1:54 pm 14

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HI, I have a Poweredge 2850 but I cant Access PERC/CERC Configuration Utility menu,
When it boots wont appear Ctrl – M or Control R……..what can I do…Thanks in advance

Ramesh Natarajan July 8, 2009 at 10:03 pm 15

@Arul, What do you mean by retrieve data from raid 1+0? If one of the disk failed in RAID
1+0 RAID-Group, then the whole logical volume will go to degraded status. Once you replace
the failed disk, it will automatically sync the data and change the status to Active.

@John, That is very strange. It definitely shows on the several PowerEdge 2850 servers I
tested in the data center. Are you looking under the section where it says “PowerEdge
Expandable RAID ControllerBIOS” during the boot-up. i.e as Shown in the 1st picture in this
article? You don’t even see such message during boot-up? If not, you better call DELL
support to find out what is going on.

Jhon July 9, 2009 at 12:44 pm 16

Thanks Ramesh, yes I cannot Se the message…I have 2 similar servers and Idont have any
problem….I think its more a Hardware problem…..I better call Dell Support.

Ramesh Natarajan July 14, 2009 at 10:21 pm 17

@John, Please Keep me updated on the outcome of the support ticket that you created with
DELL on this topic. I’m very curious to find out the reason for this problem and how it was
resolved. Thanks.

Jhon July 23, 2009 at 6:36 pm 18

HI Ramesh thanks for the concern, it result that was a Hardware problem, I replaced the
raiser with another one and it Work, so Im in the process to buy that piece…..It was weird but
it result to be Hardware!!!!!!…thanks for the support.

Ramesh Natarajan July 25, 2009 at 12:24 am 19

@John,

Thanks for sharing the information with me. Yeah. It is very weird that a hardware issue could
cause that problem. But, I’m not surprised about this at all. I’ve seen similar issues with DELL
servers (especially anything to do with BIOS related software issues), where a software
problem turned out to be because of hardware issues. Good luck with your replacement.

ahmed wahashi September 13, 2009 at 6:36 pm 20

guys
I need your help
i have dell perc 6i ,once install unbeakable linux on the server the server R900 can not
detect the disk then go out of the installation ,please i want the steps or method for complete
my installation
be aware this is the first time install linux on the server.

Soorjith P September 18, 2009 at 8:40 am 21

Hi
Thanks for your article.
I need one help, I have a HP ML370 G5 Tower Server E5420.
We installed Ubuntu server in this, but the RAID is not working (we pulled out one disk, it
became in degraded state), we don’t know how to configure the RAID.
We need to configure the RAID properly, Can you help us?

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Dawg October 8, 2009 at 5:15 pm 22

I think you should add the Initialization instructions for NEW drives !
In my PE2800 I had all cheetah’s die @ the same time (power Surge?).
And using this tutorial sure saved me lots of time.

Is it possible to create a “dual boot” with 2 OS’s?

I would like to stop getting tech calls from customers, so having the serer boot menu to offer
XP and SBS 2003, will be a great feature for me, grant you, it will down size the hard drives,
but its more “user friendly”.

Chris October 11, 2009 at 3:55 am 23

Hi I’m very new at this but I have DELL Powervault 770n I recently purchased. I was having
some problems finding a floppy and subsequently the right SCSI drivers to try install
Windows XP as I didn’t have a copy of Server 2003. I have 2 X 18 GB 15K ultra 320 drives
and I configured the RAID array as above which worked well (Great and informative post by
the way) but whilst attempting to setup operating system I changed some settings. I think I did
a consistency check which came up with a failed drive and I think it’s automatically rebuilding
the drive as it says drive 1 : ONLIN A00-01 / drive 2 : REBLD A00-00, I cant configure
anything at the moment as it says drive is currently in RBLD state, but theres no indication
it’s actually doing anything and I turned off the computer not knowing what I was doing whilst
it said this and pulled out the drives thinking it would correct itself. I’m not sure if I’ve screwed
the drive. When I did do a restart it says 1 drive is degraded state but I have not yet been
able to access an operating system only the dell server management. I’ve just found a floppy
and pretty sure I’ve got the right drivers now to install XP but now I dont know about the drive
or whether XP will see the drive in this state so I’m not sure what to do now. I guess my
question is what does RBLD A00-00 mean I’ve been traulling the web for hours and have not
found an explanation…if anyone could help it would be great it’s taken me over a week just
to find a floppy so I’m pretty frustrated by now.

Hernan November 5, 2009 at 12:01 pm 24

Hello, I have this situation.

I have 1 DELL 6850 with:

1 PERC 4/dc Raid controller with 1 volume – 3 disks RAID 5 (server bays).
another 4e/di raid controller (additional card) connected to a 1 TB storage (with 10 SCSI
discs (140 GB Maxtor) . I made 2 logical volumes here, with 5 disks in RAID 5 mode.

Everything ok. the Volume at the 4/dc was initialized properly.

I switch to the second adapter from the CTRL M screen. I ve started the initialize process for
the others two volumes…. and… NEVER FINISH…… NEVER. I left it a lot of time really.

I’ve UPGRADED the BIOS of the SERVER, also and UPGRADE with the Firmware on both
adapters. Factory defaults for them. Nothing
I’ve Connected the Storage on the second channel of the 4/dc controller. Nothing.
I’ve tried with a unique disk. diffent disks. Nothing.

Any IDEA ???, I cannot initialize the the 2 by RAID 5 volumes….

How can I do that to start using them??

help

j spellman March 16, 2010 at 6:33 pm 25

Great Article! I have a dell 2850 (perc 4/i a06 bios) 5 drive (3-36 raid 0) 2-76 raid 1.
I just added a 6th 76gb disk. I’m out of space on raid 0 c: drive. Can I add the new drive to
the raid 0 array?

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thanks
jim

Fabio Martins March 19, 2010 at 9:05 am 26

Please, How to add a DISK on a 3 disks RAID 5 volume on PERC/CERC BIOS utility U821?

CJ April 7, 2010 at 10:59 am 27

Thanks so much, this helped me out a ton. Keep it up.

Orlando May 22, 2010 at 5:06 pm 28

Excellent Article, it was very useful for me

Thank very much!!!

Dave June 13, 2010 at 11:43 am 29

I currently have 5 physical drives in a raid-5 configuration working great. All healthy with an
online status. I added another drive to the server and it has a “ready” next to the status. I
wanted to ADD this to the raid configuration to get additional space. Is this possible? Or do I
need to delete everything and reconstruct a new raid config, and restore from backup? I did
manage to set the drive to HotSpare by hitting F4
Thank you
Dave

idhayan June 24, 2010 at 8:37 am 30

Dear Ramesh Natarajan,

This site is very informative and all the articles are useful to the beginners like me. Thanks a
lot. Pls continue the gud work.

Marko July 6, 2010 at 2:59 pm 31

I have a related question about adding drives. Current = PE2950 Gen III, PERC 5/i Raid
Controller, 3 SAS drives in Raid 5, 1 SAS drive as Hot Spare. OS is Windows Server 2003
SP2/ SQL Server 2000. I am needing to upgrade this Server to Server 2008 64bit and SQL
Server 2005. My ultimate goal is to have the new OS on 2 new SAS drives in a Raid 1 Array
and 3 new SAS drives in a Raid 5 Array with a 6th new SAS drive as a Global Hot Spare.
Since this is a Critical production server, I am wanting to maintain the current OS in an
Opperable condition that I can switch back to during normal business hours, until I have the
new OS and SQL loaded,updated and ready for production operation. That being said: the
question is…If I add 2 new SAS drives in a Raid 1 Array, can the bootable Array/Volume be
swithced back and forth between the current Array and the newly created Array so that I can
work on the new OS install and then switch back to the current Array for business hour
operation?

Rafael July 11, 2010 at 5:51 am 32

Thank you! Really useful post!

Joe July 24, 2010 at 4:44 pm 33

Ramesh…

This is the most informative post i’ve found regarding where I stand with my problem.

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Perhaps you can help me… it would be tremendously appreciated as I have to get this server
back up by Monday.

On my current setup, I have 2 identical (working but space lacking) Seagate hard drives in
Raid 1 array (Perc 4 SC Controller, running Configuration Utility 0821) that I need to replace
with 2 new, identical (Large size) Fujitsu hard drives. I do not have the time or the option of
going ahead with a fresh installation of everything. I planned on cloning the data off this
existing array, using Acronis True Image 2011, onto the new 2 Fujitsu drives and then
replace the old Seagate drives with the 2 Fujitsu drives in the positions the old drives are in.
I’ve already cloned the Raid 1 array onto the 2 new drives and both are setup with identical,
proportional partitions…. both of the 2 new drives are now clones of each other.

Can I go ahead and remove the old drives and replace them with the 2 new drives and
attempt a rebuild in the Configuration Utility or something else? I was hoping that I wouldn’t
have to worry about the order in which the new drives are connected now that they both
have copies of the same data… if one needs to re-master itself off the other drive, either of
them have the data needed for the other.

I’d really appreciate it if you could give me some advice on this… it’s very nerve racking!

pintu August 2, 2010 at 5:22 am 34

dear sir
i’m new in server world , please help me how to configure raid 5 in ibm x3650m2 model
server for fault tolearence. send me details in my mail id and i will be vary thankful to uuu.

JH August 9, 2010 at 7:27 am 35

Hi All,
I have a very old Dell PE6500 server, recently I changed both the harddisk (RAID 1) and try
to format it with my OS cd, btw this is my 1st time trying to format server, I hope it’s the same
way like formating a laptop. The problem now is, I can’t log to F2 setup, boot from cd, or log
into ctrl+M, it just hang in bios showing ctrl+m on the last paragraph. The serve do respond
when I ctrl+alt+del, so I know it doesn’t totally freeze. I need help, really want to format this
server.All I have is my OS cd. TQ.

SirusVirus September 9, 2010 at 12:27 am 36

Hi! I want to say – thank you very much! Very useful guide, I configured RAID-5 on my Dell
PowerEdge 6800 server! All works fine!

Radhagovind Sharma September 27, 2010 at 1:17 am 37

This is the most informative post i’ve found regarding where I stand with my problem.

Perhaps you can help me… it would be tremendously appreciated as I have to get this server
back up by Monday.

Ron Leach September 28, 2010 at 7:30 pm 38

Thank you!
It has been a while since I worked on a RAID setup on a Dell server and your article walked
me through the process quickly and quite easily.
I appreciate the help.

Mallika October 12, 2010 at 4:00 pm 39

Hi Ramesh!

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Thanks a lot for your step-by-step guide, it was really helpful, as I am not a sysadmin person.
I just configured an additional hardware RAID1 on my Dell PowerEdge 2850 server, it works
fine.

Cheers!

niyifasha October 21, 2010 at 11:55 pm 40

what is the better way to installe memories in dell power rdge 2900

Mujtaba November 28, 2010 at 2:12 am 41

Dear Ramesh
Can you tell me How to Configure the RAID in Dell Server 2800 and How to Log in
to Setup of RAID.

Thank

Mujtaba

Emmanuel November 30, 2010 at 7:23 pm 42

Hi all I hope you are fine

I have a next situation:

I have two servers PowerEdge 1750 in the first server1 one HDD fail, I need replace this
damaged Hdd, but I only have the HDD on the other server2, I want to remove one hdd form
server2 and put into the Server1, but i think so that is necessary to remove some RAID
reference in the HHD of the server2 before to install it on the server1, do you known how I
can do it?

Abid December 11, 2010 at 12:05 am 43

Dear Ramesh Natarajan,

Great Article!
and
This site is very informative and all the articles are useful to the beginners like me. Thanks a
lot. Pls continue the gud work

Sandeep Kumar February 15, 2011 at 4:30 am 44

A very usefull page…………………..

Tojano April 28, 2011 at 9:52 am 45

The “Flex Expansion” dynamic option does NOT exist in my U827 PERC 4e/DC BIOS Config
Uitlity dated Jan 2005. I have yet to find WHAT update on Dell contains any newer Perc BIOS
Config Utility. Maybe the Backplane or BMC updates (I have not yet applied those). I have a
Dell PE 2850, and I am trying to find the various options that will allow us to EXPAND the
existing arrays, to include new physical drives – this is a VERY COMMON need among sys
admins.

1) How do you add drive to an EXISTING ‘Logical Array’? Anybody can add 2 new drives and
make a NEW ‘Logical Drive’ of RAID 1 with those 2 new drives – that is nothing new. What is
really NOT well-understood is “Can we add NEW physical drives as part of an EXISTING
‘Logical Array?’ – and can this be done without destroying the array?” – i.e., in some of Dell’s
documentation, they have a PERC 4e/DC option that does NOT seem to exist in MY version
of the PERC 4e/DC BIOS Configuration Utility – U827, and the option supposedly is under

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“Logical Drives,” and is reference in various documents as “Flex-something?” – I see in other
locations a “Flex Power” option, but the option to which I am referring is a “Flex Expansion”
option – ideally, it will let you “dynamically re-configure your RAID array, without having to
reboot, and without having to destroy your array – i.e., it “extends” or “expands” your array to
include new phyisical drives.

Your screen shots of your BIOS configruation utility show an even OLDER version (U821)
than the one I have (U827). If you search on Google, various PERC 4e/DC tech documents
show that, under “Objects,” “Logical Drives,” there is supposed to be a “Flex Expansion”
option, but it just DOES NOT EXIST!

2) As I indicated, most folks want to know “What are the next steps?” In other words, you tell
us to create a new set of 2 physical drives as a new RAID 1 logical drive; but what does that
accomplish? What is the NEXT step? How do we utilize the new Logical drive to extend our
current storage? Do we simply go into the (in my case) Windows o/s and go to Storage
Management, add drives, and then add those to our existing storage?

Again, your article is useful, but only to the point where you are leaving out the “NEXT steps.”
Thank you.

Gerald Justice May 11, 2011 at 3:18 pm 46

Hi,

I have a Dell R900 with a PERC 6/i and a PERC 6/E. The PERC 6/E always comes up as the
first controller (Controller ID 0) if it is in the system but if not the PERC 6/i comes up as ID 0.
You can see this in the third tab titled “Ctrl Mgmt” in the BIOS Config Utility.

Does anyone know if there is a way to force the 6/i to be ID 0 all the time? Having the 6/E first
causes device naming inconsistency issues for Linux and issues with our install methods
which use scripts.

We tried using several different slots for the 6/E and tried factory resetting the 6/i when it was
alone in the system but it went back to 1 as soon as the 6/E appeared in the system so it
seems that the ID is dynamically assigned everytime the system resets. This is scary from a
device management perspective.

Our other Dell models do not exhibit this behaviour!

Thanks,

Gerald

paecific.jr May 27, 2011 at 3:17 pm 47

Thanks a ton. I have never used bios before (i’m only 13) and a co-worker guided me to your
post. You helped get my Dell PowerEdge 2800 up and running. Thanks

Md. Kamrul Hasan June 19, 2011 at 6:51 pm 48

My Server is using PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility U827. In physical drive selection
menu, I could not see any of my hard drives in RAID Ch-0 or SCSI Ch-1. Can any one help
me?

satya June 28, 2011 at 7:35 am 49

Hi Ramesh,

I would like to know how to recover data in case for failed raid card or server crash. Let me
know the details which will help me in case of server crash.

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Thanks,
Satya

Ghanashyam September 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm 50

This is very very nice article with screen shot. Excellent Article, it was very useful for me
Thank very much!!!

Bernie September 16, 2011 at 6:45 am 51

Thank you so much for this post. I have just purchased two Dell Poweredge 2850 and was
struggling to configure the RAID. The above was clear and worked first time. I had found the
utility but nowehere does it say anything about F10

Scott October 15, 2011 at 11:39 am 52

Hi Ramesh,

these instructions worked great! Thank you, but I have an issue with reassigning the drive
letters after doing this proceedure. I have added the new drives and I can change the drive
letters on them. but I can not change the drive letter on the partition of the original drive. for
example, I am tring the move drive “E” to the new drives and make the new drives “E”. I have
attemped to change “E” drive to another letter and I get an error “The Operation was
canceled due to an internal error”. i have been trying to do this through the disk manager.

ahmed December 29, 2011 at 1:41 pm 53

Hi Ramesh

this is important information I was really need it ,I have a question for you
1 – I have a storage device that contain 6 HDD and this storage device connected to Dell
server using SCSI Cards but it didn’t work ,is that above info of you applied on this case ?

sunny January 9, 2012 at 12:15 pm 54

THANK YOU — YOU SAVED FROM LOSEING HOURS

haveraels January 17, 2012 at 10:28 am 55

bonjours j ai un Dell PowerEdge 6850 a configurer 2 hdd de 36 et 3 de 146 a configurer en

raid 5 et puis installer linux comment faire pour configurer le raid 5 dans le bios
merci
-Translation from French to English-
j hellos have a Dell PowerEdge 6850 has two hdd set of 36 146 and 3 to configure as RAID
5, and then install linux how to configure raid 5 in the bios
thank you

Anonymous January 18, 2012 at 8:25 am 56

How do you disable RAID-1 through bios/configuration settings ?

Jason Nielsen February 1, 2012 at 2:25 pm 57

I am looking to do a RAID 1 on my XPS 8300 I recently purchased. Will I be able to follow the
same general idea as this article? I have 1TB in my computer currently and purchased
another TB that I want to use as a mirror to back up data.

In short, once I add the SATA drive to my computer can I access the BIOS menu and

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configure that drive to a RAID 1?

Thank You.

Agnes Goudeaux May 1, 2012 at 12:00 pm 58

I thank You for the information it has help me very well.

Weimin Chen May 8, 2012 at 3:23 pm 59

Someone mentioned disk format. I am trying to add a data disk from another server and read
the data out of the disk —- I don’t expect it will get formatted in any way. By reading the
article, I think it is safe to follow the steps, as long as I don’t manually run disk format, right?
Thanks a lot.

Asif May 11, 2012 at 5:19 am 60

According to your article -”The text next to ONLINE indicates the logical volume number and
the disk# inside the logical drive. For e.g. A01-00 indicates logical volume 1 and disk#0. A01-
01 indicates logical volume 2 and disk#1″

Shouldn’t A01-00 mean logical volume 1 disk #0 and A01-01 mean logical volume 1 disk #
1.In that case A00-01 should mean logical volume 0 disk 1.I am confused about it and the
role of logical volume in RAID configuration.Can you please help me out

mike hritz May 21, 2012 at 1:37 pm 61

so I had a hardware (processor fail) on a PE2850, I have another 2850, but with more
memory and 2 processors. There is not a RAID configuration on the Controller card on the
spare 2850, If I just put the drives in the same slots and configure the RAID in similar fashion
I should be OK…right?? or will I lose the RAID config.

MAM June 12, 2012 at 12:57 am 62

I came morning at server room and i heard alert sound peeeb peeb, i look to the server
(DELL PowerEdge 6800) there is orange led at one of HDD and the other flashed, and the
server is working and its on windows.

I restart the server and go through CTRL+M menu. i found it in progress to change from
RAID 5 to RAID 0. Please could you help me what is happened after finishing reconstruction.

Ben Kadri August 20, 2012 at 10:53 pm 63

At first thank you for the great tutorial. I wish I found it last week, I spent hours trying to
configure a Power Edge Server 1650SC with Raid 5 already set up. However no boot drives
could be detected by the BIOS. In the system they were 5 scsi drives and one ide drive. I
couldn’t install Windows server 2008 because no drives were detected. I had to switch from
Raid 5 to Raid 0 to be able to configure one (only one) scsi drive as a logical drive and install
2008. Raid 1 wasn’t available in the options. Now how can add the 4 other scsi drives to the
array without altering my boot drive.
Thanks for you help.
Ben

Richard August 23, 2012 at 3:25 pm 64

Thanks for this article really helped, well explained, great.

Ben Kadri August 23, 2012 at 6:40 pm 65

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Sorry I meant how do I configure the ide drive as a back up and eventually to boot from in
case the scsi fails. as for now the ide drive lights up but it is not not detected by the Bios.
thank you for any imputs.
Ben.

rehan October 24, 2012 at 12:05 am 66

hi, i have dell r410 with perc h700. My server was shipped with a singal hdd. i added 3 more
hdds on the hotswappable trays.
The Hard drives are shown in Raid config, but are written unuaseable.
Please advice how to set up the raid?
Could i be missing a step?
regards

Joseph November 13, 2012 at 7:22 am 67

dell server poweredge 6800 when booting this error massage comes percRAID Adapter
copyright LSI logic corporation
cache memory error!
please cheak SDRAM connection
if problem persists contact dell support
press any key to continue
i need help on what is happing

jorge March 7, 2013 at 11:30 am 68

Hi guys, need ur help on this, I have a dell poweredge 2800 it was ok till raid memory was
removed, when inserted it back on its place, the expandable raid controller didn’t launch
anymore, tried Ctrl+M / R and nothing, what should I do ?

Pablo Reyes April 8, 2013 at 11:58 am 69

Hi all,
I am a little bit desperate because I never experienced this before.

I have a Dell PowerEdge 850 with a Raid 1 (2 scsci hdd of 73gb).

Hard Drive 2 fail; system is runing on hard disk 1
I just received the replacement disk, and installed with the same configuration (dip switches)
When I boot the system, the systems take me directly to the bios of the Raid Card, but I don’t
know what to there.

Can someone provide me with the steps to replace a fail hard drive on a PowerEdge 850 with
Perc Raid (i think).

Thanks in advance.

anoop May 6, 2013 at 3:26 am 70

very helpfull

John September 25, 2013 at 11:32 pm 71

useful

bara November 11, 2013 at 2:00 am 72

hi gys please help,,I jst want to install windows server 2008 on power edge 2008.i donot know
how to install it , please can you provide me wit an manual.

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Andy March 26, 2014 at 8:27 am 73

Thanks mate. will try and see if it works on my server.

Keep up the good work !!

Jesus May 12, 2014 at 11:59 am 74

I have a server PE 2850 today give me this error Error E07F0 processor 1 iErr the same for
Processor 2 I restart the server and after this the server is not working more
I move the hard drives to other identical server the server recognize all the Hard drive
I have 4 HD 146 gb on raid 5 and 2 HD 300 gbon raid 1 but on the new server only recognize
2 HD on Raid1 and the other 4 as READY
and the virtual drives is correct
Can I delete the raid 1 configuration and recreate the correct raid configuration with Riad 5
and Raid 1? WITHOUT LOST MY DATA?

FrAnTz! May 28, 2014 at 6:43 am 75

I have a Dell Server PowerEdge R510 (7JH2N4J) ,with 2 HD Dell 300GB 15K 6Gb/s SAS
2.5″.Now I am trying to add 2 more of the same exactly HDs but when I enter to the BIOS
Configuration Utility (mine goes with Ctrl+R) I can see all 4 HDs in the section “Physical
Drives” but the 2 are in state “ONLINE” and the other 2 are in state “READY” and it doesn’t
let me “force online” them.Is there a solution to my problem?

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