Help! Need boot manager able to boot to non-BIOS controller drives.

[Guest]

So I inherited a slightly old Dell Precision workstation.
It's braindead BIOS only allows booting from drives attached
to onboard controllers.

I had bought a nice new 3Gbps SATA Raid PCI card, and hoped to
be able to boot from it, but found that - although the RAID setup
code on the card could be run at boot time, the BIOS itself didn't
know that that card was out there and that there were drives attached
to it.

I have tried several boot managers (booted them from CD), and also
tried installing Windows XP and gave it the controller manufacturer's
driver floppy to load, but neither the boot managers, nor Windows,
could see the controller or the drives on it.

What I'd like to do is reattach one of my hard drives to the
motherboard's SATA controller (it's a slower, older one, that's
why I'm not using it), and install some sort of boot manager on
it that has the ability to see this controller card.

I suspect it's not possible, since if the Windows installer
can't see it even after loading the driver for it, something odd
must be going on (or the Dell Windows installer only sees things
the BIOS lets it, perhaps).

Any suggestions out there? Other than suggesting I just use the
onboard controllers and forget about the PCI card.

By the way, I'm posting this on the comp.periphs.scsi as well, since
these issues crop up with SCSI add-on cards as well, so I thought there
might well be a lot of expertise in this area there.

- Tim

--

 

[Arno Wagner]

So I inherited a slightly old Dell Precision workstation.
It's braindead BIOS only allows booting from drives attached
to onboard controllers.

I had bought a nice new 3Gbps SATA Raid PCI card, and hoped to
be able to boot from it, but found that - although the RAID setup
code on the card could be run at boot time, the BIOS itself didn't
know that that card was out there and that there were drives attached
to it.

I have tried several boot managers (booted them from CD), and also
tried installing Windows XP and gave it the controller manufacturer's
driver floppy to load, but neither the boot managers, nor Windows,
could see the controller or the drives on it.

What I'd like to do is reattach one of my hard drives to the
motherboard's SATA controller (it's a slower, older one, that's
why I'm not using it),

I don't believe there are slow SATA controllers. The 3Gbps is
fir future disks. On current disks it does not make any perceptible
difference.

and install some sort of boot manager on
it that has the ability to see this controller card.

If the card is not seen, then the BIOS on the card did
not run or did not run successfully. Nothing you can do
about that with a boot manager. Instead you might try to
update 1) the BIOS on the controller card 2) the mainboard
BIOS. But I think you should just use the onboard
controller instead.

I suspect it's not possible, since if the Windows installer
can't see it even after loading the driver for it, something odd
must be going on (or the Dell Windows installer only sees things
the BIOS lets it, perhaps).

Any suggestions out there? Other than suggesting I just use the
onboard controllers and forget about the PCI card.

I would suggest exactly that. Quite possibly the onboard controller
may be faster if it does not have to go through the slow PCI
bus. If it is PCI attached, it is unlikely to be slower.

Arno

By the way, I'm posting this on the comp.periphs.scsi as well, since
these issues crop up with SCSI add-on cards as well, so I thought there
might well be a lot of expertise in this area there.

- Tim

 

[hdrdtd]

You've probably already tried this, but....

The BIOS in many systems will see an add-in controller card regardless of
whether it's IDE, SATA, etc, as a SCSI card.

I've had a few systems like that, and in the BIOS under the Boot Order
section ot thereabouts it would allow you to select the SCSI card to boot
from.

 

[Guest]

You've probably already tried this, but....

The BIOS in many systems will see an add-in controller card regardless of
whether it's IDE, SATA, etc, as a SCSI card.

I've had a few systems like that, and in the BIOS under the Boot Order
section ot thereabouts it would allow you to select the SCSI card to boot
from.

Thanks much, but yeah, I already tried that.

The BIOS didn't seem to see it at all, at least, it wasn't reflected
in it's list of boot devices (only the onboard devices were listed).

However, reading up on the Silicon Image 3124 chip that's on it,
it seems it might be that it won't act as a regular SATA controller
right out of the box, but that I need to set up SOME kind of RAID
(or JBOD) via the controller's BIOS for it even to report the drives
as existing.

I'll try that tonight and report back...

- Tim

--

 

[Guest]

[ ... ]

I don't believe there are slow SATA controllers. The 3Gbps is
fir future disks. On current disks it does not make any perceptible
difference.

Well, one of the drives I have in the system is a 3Gbps drive.
The other is a previous generation disk. I realize that the PCI bus
will limits the throughout ANYWAY, but I'd still like to use my
Bright Shiny New Controller for everything.

If the card is not seen, then the BIOS on the card did
not run or did not run successfully. Nothing you can do
about that with a boot manager. Instead you might try to
update 1) the BIOS on the controller card 2) the mainboard
BIOS. But I think you should just use the onboard
controller instead.

Using the latest mainboard BIOS. The BIOS on the controller seems
to be doing OKAY, not sure if it's updatable. However, in reading up
on the Silicon Image 3124 chip on the board, it seems I need to configure
the attached drives as SOME kind of RAID or JBOD... I had - perhaps
wrongly - assumed that, out of the box, it would function as a simple
SATA controller without any special configuration (I don't want to use
it's RAID capability, and wondered if using it's JBOD capability
would slow performance at all).

I would suggest exactly that. Quite possibly the onboard controller
may be faster if it does not have to go through the slow PCI
bus. If it is PCI attached, it is unlikely to be slower.

Yes, that is a possibility. I'll need to contact Seagate and Dell
to see if I need to jumper the 3Gbps drive to work at 1.5Gbps speeds,
though.

Thanks for your advice!

- Tim

--

 

[Guest]

Just to followup -- reading the online docs for the chip
on this board, I saw the following regarding the board's BIOS
RAID setup functions:

Creating a JBOD Configuration
The BIOS RAID utility does not report non-RAID drives to the system BIOS.
If a non-RAID boot drive or data drive is desired, create a JBOD so the BIOS
RAID utility will report the drive to the system BIOS.

1. Select Create RAID set from the Main Menu section of the RAID Configuration Utility screen.
2. Select JBOD and press Enter.
3. Select JBOD drive from the Physical Drive list and press Enter.
4. Select the size of the JBOD drive with the . and . keys and press Enter.
5. When the Are You Sure? confirmation prompt appears, respond Y to complete the JBOD configuration.

So... if I'm lucky, I can just create a JBOD of each of the drives
individually (if that's allowed, otherwise, all of them together
as a JBOD) and use them that way.

I still wonder if use of the mapping that may go on when I do that (as
opposed to just a simple SATA controller with a 1/1 phys/logical mapping
for the drives) will impede performance at all.

Given the fast drive and fast controllers (both 3Gbps capable), but being
on the PCI bus, I guess that's not something I have to worry about much.

- Tim

--

 

[Arno Wagner]

[ ... ]

I don't believe there are slow SATA controllers. The 3Gbps is
fir future disks. On current disks it does not make any perceptible
difference.

Well, one of the drives I have in the system is a 3Gbps drive.
The other is a previous generation disk. I realize that the PCI bus
will limits the throughout ANYWAY, but I'd still like to use my
Bright Shiny New Controller for everything.

I understand that perfectly well.

Still, the 3Gbps figure is interface transfer rate only.
The disk needs maybe 0.6Gbps peak rate. The older controller
is perfectly able to supply that.

Using the latest mainboard BIOS. The BIOS on the controller seems
to be doing OKAY, not sure if it's updatable. However, in reading up
on the Silicon Image 3124 chip on the board, it seems I need to configure
the attached drives as SOME kind of RAID or JBOD... I had - perhaps
wrongly - assumed that, out of the box, it would function as a simple
SATA controller without any special configuration (I don't want to use
it's RAID capability, and wondered if using it's JBOD capability
would slow performance at all).

Aha. That may be it. If you are unlucky this thing will not
work as an ordinary controller at all. Check whether it can first.
JBOD is basically linear appening of drives of possibly different
sizes. Not recomended at all, but for a single disk it should
be as fast and reliable as non-RAID. Howver it is possible that
the data on the disk is not readable on an ordinary controller,
since a RAID superblock may be put at the beginning of the disk.
Personally I would not use JBOD.

Yes, that is a possibility. I'll need to contact Seagate and Dell
to see if I need to jumper the 3Gbps drive to work at 1.5Gbps speeds,
though.

Just connect it. If it works you are fine. If it does not,
jumper it down.

Thanks for your advice!

You are welcome.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

Just to followup -- reading the online docs for the chip
on this board, I saw the following regarding the board's BIOS
RAID setup functions:

Creating a JBOD Configuration
The BIOS RAID utility does not report non-RAID drives to the system BIOS.
If a non-RAID boot drive or data drive is desired, create a JBOD so the BIOS
RAID utility will report the drive to the system BIOS.

1. Select Create RAID set from the Main Menu section of the RAID Configuration Utility screen.
2. Select JBOD and press Enter.
3. Select JBOD drive from the Physical Drive list and press Enter.
4. Select the size of the JBOD drive with the . and . keys and press Enter.
5. When the Are You Sure? confirmation prompt appears, respond Y to complete the JBOD configuration.

So... if I'm lucky, I can just create a JBOD of each of the drives
individually (if that's allowed, otherwise, all of them together
as a JBOD) and use them that way.

Better use them individually. If one drive in a JBOD fails, all data is
gone.

I still wonder if use of the mapping that may go on when I do that (as
opposed to just a simple SATA controller with a 1/1 phys/logical mapping
for the drives) will impede performance at all.

No. Not likely.

Given the fast drive and fast controllers (both 3Gbps capable), but being
on the PCI bus, I guess that's not something I have to worry about much.

Forget about that 3Gbps figure. Todays disks don't need more than 25%
of that. The PCI bus will be a bottleneck if you have two disks
running over it though. Might still not be too bad.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I don't believe there are slow SATA controllers.

No, really?

The 3Gbps is fir future disks.

Or for external raid cabinets.

On current disks it does not make any perceptible difference.


If the card is not seen, then the BIOS on the card did
not run or did not run successfully. Nothing you can do about
that with a boot manager. Instead you might try to update
1) the BIOS on the controller card 2) the mainboard BIOS.
But I think you should just use the onboard controller instead.



I would suggest exactly that. Quite possibly the onboard controller
may be faster if it does not have to go through the slow PCI bus.

If it is PCI attached, it is unlikely to be slower.

That makes so much sense, doesn't it.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Just to followup -- reading the online docs for the chip on this board,
I saw the following regarding the board's BIOS RAID setup functions:

Creating a JBOD Configuration
The BIOS RAID utility does not report non-RAID drives to the system BIOS.
If a non-RAID boot drive or data drive is desired, create a JBOD so the BIOS
RAID utility will report the drive to the system BIOS.

1. Select Create RAID set from the Main Menu section of the RAID Configuration Utility screen.
2. Select JBOD and press Enter.
3. Select JBOD drive from the Physical Drive list and press Enter.
4. Select the size of the JBOD drive with the . and . keys and press Enter.
5. When the Are You Sure? confirmation prompt appears, respond Y to complete the JBOD configuration.

So... if I'm lucky, I can just create a JBOD of each of the drives
individually (if that's allowed, otherwise, all of them together
as a JBOD) and use them that way.

So what happened to: "nor Windows, could see the controller" - "or the drives on it."
Or: "It's braindead BIOS only allows booting from drives attached to onboard controllers".

I still wonder if use of the mapping that may go on when I do that

There is no mapping with JBOD on a single drive. And any mapping is just a very
simple decision of which drive to send the data to. No performance overhead at all.

(as opposed to just a simple SATA controller with a 1/1 phys/logical mapping
for the drives) will impede performance at all.

So no.

Given the fast drive and fast controllers (both 3Gbps capable), but being
on the PCI bus, I guess that's not something I have to worry about much.

There is no slowdown whatsoever, unless you use both drives simultaniously
using sequential transfers. If that bothers you, put the other drive on the
onboard controller.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Well, the Windows installer couldn't see it, but now that I've read
that documentation (I had to look for it on the Silicon Image website),

I believe (or hope) that once I add these drives via the controller's
BIOS, they'll be seen,

if not as bootable devices by the system BIOS,

Actually, that may well be the root cause of that particular problem:
no drive so no boot entry for it. Configuration will likely fix that.

at least by the Windows Installer and/or other boot-time programs.

Not if the controller isn't seen, it won't.

I'll test that out tonight, and report back here.


Good to know! Thanks!


I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll probably put the other drive on the
onboad controller just for the hell of it. It's a much lower-performing
and smaller drive that came with the machine.

One of the reasons I bought this particular SATA controller was that it
also had an external eSATA port, and I have a SATA drive array I want to
connect to it from time to time.

Be advised that there is eSATA and eSATA. The real deal is SATA for
external drives and there is also the simple conversion of internal SATA
to an external connector. The real eSATA needs a real eSATA drive
interface to be able to use longer than 1m cables. The converted
SATA is still limited to the 1m internal cable length.

 

[Guest]

So what happened to: "nor Windows, could see the controller" - "or the drives on it."
Or: "It's braindead BIOS only allows booting from drives attached to onboard controllers".

Well, the Windows installer couldn't see it, but now that I've read
that documentation (I had to look for it on the Silicon Image website),
I believe (or hope) that once I add these drives via the controller's
BIOS, they'll be seen, if not as bootable devices by the system BIOS,
at least by the Windows Installer and/or other boot-time programs.

I'll test that out tonight, and report back here.

There is no mapping with JBOD on a single drive. And any mapping is just a very
simple decision of which drive to send the data to. No performance overhead at all.

Good to know! Thanks!

There is no slowdown whatsoever, unless you use both drives simultaniously
using sequential transfers. If that bothers you, put the other drive on the
onboard controller.

I'm not sure how I'll do it, but I'll probably put the other drive on the
onboad controller just for the hell of it. It's a much lower-performing
and smaller drive that came with the machine.

One of the reasons I bought this particular SATA controller was that it
also had an external eSATA port, and I have a SATA drive array I want to
connect to it from time to time. I wouldn't mind a non-RAID controller, but
this one had just the footprint I wanted.

- Tim

--

 

[Scott Lurndal]

Better use them individually. If one drive in a JBOD fails, all data is
gone.

I don't think you understand what JBOD is. JBOD _is_ individual disks.
(Just Big Ol' Disk). You are thinking of RAID-0 in which data is striped
across multiple spindles.

Forget about that 3Gbps figure. Todays disks don't need more than 25%
of that. The PCI bus will be a bottleneck if you have two disks
running over it though. Might still not be too bad.

Given that most drives include some amount of cache memory, and accesses
from cache memory on the drive will transit the serial ATA connection at
interface speed (1.5/3Gbps), the interface speed does matter for some
workloads independent of the speed at which data can be retrieved from
the platter (which is considerably less than the interface speed).

scott

 

[Guest]

Actually, that may well be the root cause of that particular problem:
no drive so no boot entry for it. Configuration will likely fix that.

That's what I'm thinking.

Not if the controller isn't seen, it won't.

I'm crossing my fingers that it's only that it hadn't seen the
drives via the controller, but that the controller itself is visible.
Since the controller's BIOS is available for configuration at boot
time, I'd hope that meant that it was playing nicely with the system
BIOS.

Be advised that there is eSATA and eSATA. The real deal is SATA for
external drives and there is also the simple conversion of internal SATA
to an external connector. The real eSATA needs a real eSATA drive
interface to be able to use longer than 1m cables. The converted
SATA is still limited to the 1m internal cable length.

I'm not sure -- it's a Sil3124-based board, and I have another
Sil3124-based board (Cardbus) that is fine with the longer SATA
cables I've been using with it. Even if it can't handle it,
it probably is allright, since I'm planning on moving the
disc array over next to the computer I put the controller in.

Thanks for more good technical info!

- Tim

--

 

[Rod Speed]

I don't think you understand what JBOD is.

You dont.

JBOD _is_ individual disks.

Concantenated, actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD

(Just Big Ol' Disk).

"Just a Bunch of Disks" actually.

You are thinking of RAID-0 in which data is striped across multiple spindles.

Nope, he is thinking concatenated drives.

Given that most drives include some amount of cache memory, and
accesses from cache memory on the drive will transit the serial ATA
connection at interface speed (1.5/3Gbps), the interface speed does
matter for some workloads independent of the speed at which data can
be retrieved from the platter (which is considerably less than the
interface speed).

Wrong again, the OS level cache completely swamps that.

 

[Guest]

Concantenated, actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBOD

I'll read that article when I get home - curious, though, DOES a
concatenated drive contain any info other than the usual compliment
of partitioning and user data, that would keep it from working
as a single drive plugged into a non-raid controller?

This, assuming that I use each drive singly, and don't merge
(concatenate) drives together?

- Tim

--

 

[Rod Speed]

I'll read that article when I get home - curious, though, DOES
a concatenated drive contain any info other than the usual
compliment of partitioning and user data, that would keep it
from working as a single drive plugged into a non-raid controller?

That concatenation data has to be kept somewhere, if
only the sequence of the drives in the concatenated set.

And the brown stuff can hit the fan if one of the drives
dies and isnt replaced by an identical drive too.

This, assuming that I use each drive singly,
and don't merge (concatenate) drives together?

The design may not treat that special case differently as far
as what it does about keeping track of what physical drive
is in what logical drive, even when there is just one in the set.

 

[Guest]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help.

It was merely a case of me not RTFM, as I ought to have.
(although the FM was located on Silicon Image's website, and hidden
deep within the bowels of the driver CD -- I'm too old fashioned, and
expect paper documentation... a dinosaur, if you will).

I added one of my drives as a "concatenated" drive, and voila! it appeared
in the BIOS list of bootable drives. *whew*.

Sorry for not knowing what I was doing before I started asking questions
here, but I also did learn a lot about the subject of RAID/JBOD, etc.

My only worry know is the annoyance of probably not being able to
mount the drive unless I'm going through this controller (not that
that happens often). I'm mainly going to use this machine as a workhorse
to process audio and video, and quickly offload it to an external drive.

I sure hope that eSATA really is eSATA, and can be used *as is* and
doesn't have to be part of a RAID or Concatenation. If it can't, I'll be
mildly screwed and pissed, since that's why I GOT this card... to use
it as a regular eSATA connection.

- Tim

--

 

[JAD]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and help.

It was merely a case of me not RTFM, as I ought to have.
(although the FM was located on Silicon Image's website, and hidden
deep within the bowels of the driver CD -- I'm too old fashioned, and
expect paper documentation... a dinosaur, if you will).

I added one of my drives as a "concatenated"

Thats all it was? I coulda told you ...just use a laxitive.... clear that
right up


drive, and voila! it appeared

 

[Arno Wagner]

I don't think you understand what JBOD is. JBOD _is_ individual disks.
(Just Big Ol' Disk). You are thinking of RAID-0 in which data is striped
across multiple spindles.

No. JBOD is also called "APPEND" mode. For striping you need disls
of equal size or loose the extra capacity. In sector sequences
of the disks are appended to form a single, larger disk.

So I think you don't understand what it is. Just a Bunch Of Disks....

Given that most drives include some amount of cache memory, and accesses
from cache memory on the drive will transit the serial ATA connection at
interface speed (1.5/3Gbps), the interface speed does matter for some
workloads independent of the speed at which data can be retrieved from
the platter (which is considerably less than the interface speed).

Not with any decent OS. Disk cache is mostly useless today.

Arno