Please help I'm having issues with getting a Raid 5 array up and running on my Win2k3 server. Here is my setup 5 Seagate SCSI Drives 147GB 80 pin that will connect into a Dell server. The dell server has the Win2k3 OS on a SATA drive, this is only dedicated to the OS, and for expandability it has 2 5 1/4 bays and 3 3.5 bays that I can use. What I planned on doing was using a hot swappable enclosure from Enlight to store the 5 hard drives, so I could setup Raid 5 for a fileserver. Unfortunately I cannot get this enclosure to work because the first drive in the array will always drop off. I can configure and build the raid array without a problem, but when I go into Windows 2003 to initialize the drives this is when the enclosure has an error, which means a drive has dropped, and the raid card (Perc4/DC) alarm also goes off (giving me an error on the server that a drive has dropped). I've tried doing this several times with no luck, and my only assumption is this Enlight enclosure is not going to work for me. If you have any ideas on what is wrong here I'll be glad to listen because I've wasted lots of my time on this Enlight device. With me guessing this Enlight enclosure is not going to work I'll be looking for some ideas to work around it. I'm basically looking for an inexpensive way to somehow house these 5 hard drives inside the server case, maybe another case, or some external box like a direct attached storage enclosure. I keep searching on the internet, but I keep finding stuff that houses to many drives, and is way to expensive. Also, when we first got the Dell server they sent me the wrong Raid card that supposedly wasn't compatible with the Intel MB (it was an Adaptec card). I shouldn't have to do a low level format on these SCSI drives, should I (Ive done because of wrong Raid card, to be safe)? I've done it twice just to see if I could get things to work, and I hope not to do it again because it takes an 1 1/2 hour for each drive one a time. I've gone through some serious problems getting this to work. I was thinking I would save the company some money and buy the drives off new egg and do the file storage setup myself, because its fairly easy, but ordering the 80 pin drives was the downfall. Thanks to anybody that can help me out.

Doh, spelled initialize in my subject wrong!

Did you check for latest drivers/firmware or possible problems with your current drivers/firmware for the RAID card? Are you sure there is not actually a problem with that drive? Can you switch the drives around and check if the same drive fails in a different location? How are you initializing the RAID 5 in W2K3 - is that with RAID card manufacturer software? Peter

It's too bad about the Adaptec RAID controller. They're pretty much the best and most reliable controller's on the market IMHO. pmk asked the right question. Have you checked for updated drivers and firmware for the device? The other thing I'm wondering about is why you're initializing the RAID in Windows? You should be configuring the RAID before you ever install the OS using the controller setup interface. That might be a part of the problem you're having. Done properly, you create the RAID and then when you go to install windows, it sees one big drive. Synchronizing the array will take a lot less time on emtpy HDD's. I know the last RAID I built on an IBM server took about 4-5 hours to synchronize on 73 GB SCSI drives and they were empty. I can't imagine how long the synchronization would have taken on disks with data on them.

Thanks for the responses guys, Yes I have the latest drivers and firmware, and I also removed a drive out of the enclosure. Also, my OS is on its own SATA hard drive, and will not be installed on the array. I did check on the hard drive failing being the problem. What I did was take out Drive 0 in the array (one that fails), and used drives 1-4, but the first drive (1) failed, so it looks as though the first drive will always fail. In Win2k3 I go into computer management, to initialize the unusable space, so that I can format the array. Are there two types of initialization when building an array? I know 5 minutes after I build the array configuration, that the drives will be initialized automatically, which is stated in the instruction manual. I let this runs for hours (I have 735GB of space) and seems to work fine because you can see the LED lights flashing. After the initialization is done I then boot up the computer, because I do the entire raid configuring in the raid cards BIOS on boot up. When I boot the computer up I go into computer management to look at my array. I can see that the array is 500 something gig, which it should be, and my only option is to initialize the drives again. Soon as I right click and choose initialize in computer management the first drive drops. I right click the array for fun while being annoyed by two loud alarms going off and see that I have a format option. Should I just be initializing once, and if so, how? Thanks I appreciate the help

Look up the seagate drives at seagate's site and print out the configuation sheet. You need to remove the auto-termination jumper. Rules of scsi are you only have termination at the end of the chain. My experience with seagate drives [twice !] is the drives are configured as standalones with auto termination enabled. In both of my cases the jumper that had to be removed was on the UNDERSIDE of the drives. You should have a active terminator at the end of the scsi cable. You init in the Raid bios. No other init is required. In Disk manager you will need to partition and then format. That should be all there is too it.

Wanderer, Hi, thanks for the ideas I checked into my drive configuration, which is a Seagate st3146707lc, and I found that the only jumpers on the drive are for SCSI ID. For my Enlight hot swap enclosure, I have to remove the jumpers for SCSI ID, because the enclosure takes care of the jumper settings. I can control the SCSI ID’s by a dip switch, on the back of the enclosure. The manual for my hard drives also states this, Most Cheetah® 10K.7 drives are factory set with the SCSI ID set at 0. If this is the only SCSI drive in your system and there are no other SCSI devices on the daisychain, you can leave this drive’s SCSI ID set to 0 and proceed to the next step. Unless I’m missing something I don’t see anything about an auto termination jumper in the manual or on the drive. The only jumpers I see are on the front end, and nothing underneath it. Also, the enclosure is supposed to do auto-termination. If you want to get a better idea on what the enclosure is and the settings on it here is a link to the manual in pdf format. http://twc.enlightcorp.com/products/server/pdf_files/EN-8721%203%20to%205%20%20manual.pdf If you have anymore feedback or suggestions, I’m more than willing to listen, Thanks for the help