Can't See SCSI Hard Drive
Dan Rose
can go into the Adaptec utility and confirm the drive is operational.
I can low level format the drive and verify it as well. Once I boot
with a win98 boot disk the drive is not recognized. I know the
adapter drivers and card are working using the boot disk because the
OS will recognize the SCSI CD drive. Once the system is booted there
is no prompt for the drive and FDISK returns "No Fixed Disk Present".
My guess is that it has something to do with the lack of a partition
on the drive but how do I partition or format the drive if the OS
doesn't see it?
MrScary
the diskette to boot from.
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
news:37a27ff2.6823792@news...
: Why does win 98 not see my SCSI hard drive. During the boot process I
Dan Rose
drive is missing. SCSI CD ROM shows so I know the drivers for the
SCSI adapter loaded. When I run FDISK I get "No Fixed Disk Present".
Tom Hanser is having the same problem just a few post below.
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999 00:02:16 -0400, "MrScary" <IamTr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
MrScary
If you use the Win98 fat32ebd diskette (see the tools/mtsutil folder on
the Win98 cd) to boot with and run fdisk - it still reports no drive found?
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
news:37a3e75f.9966424@news...
: That's the problem. Once the operating system fully boots the hard
: >
: >
:
Dan Rose
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999 02:28:09 -0400, "MrScary" <IamTr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
MrScary
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
: Correct. "No Fixed Disk Present"
Pavel
I have seen this before. Some drives come with out ID jumper installed and
that usually works fine on most systems where the system sees this drive as
drive 0 (first drive or drive C:). Check to see that there is a ID jumper on
the drive. Also check for termination. Also make sure that the CD ROM is not
using the ID 0 (or 1) or the same ID as the Hard disk. This one conflict
will cause just such problem.
As MrScary indicate in his later posts, check the Adapter/model. It may be
a controller that has no Bios and then you will need to boot with drivers
for the drive.
--
Pavel
Dan Rose
looks like this problem might be tougher to fix than I hoped for.
The controler(s) used so far. Adaptec 2940uw PCI Card bios version
1.34.3 that is in my primary (currently used) computer. It runs a
hard drive and scanner only and has worked flawlessly since new 11-98.
I am building a system for my daughter and have three older (12-97)
IBM SCSI 4.51 gig drives to put in. The system I am building has
Adaptec 7880 chip set on the Asus motherboard. The Adaptec bios
version is 2.01. All three drives worked fine in a raid configuration
2 weeks ago but I do not have access to that computer any longer.
I have done the following:
Initial ASUS build is with 1 floppy drive, 1 scsi cd drive, 1 scsi
hard drive (that won't work) and an ATI video card. I have verified
the ASUS system board is working by booting with a win98 boot disk. I
have used a disk created using MrScary's method in thread above as
well as one created in win98 add/remove programs dialog box. The SCSI
CD and floppy work fine. I have verified the SCSI ID numbers and even
changed them a few times. Eliminating the CD didn't help.
All three drives do the same thing on both systems. They are seen by
the Adapter bios. You can low level format the drive(s) using the
utility within the bios setup on both systems. You can verify the
dive is working in the bios utility on both systems. During the boot
process the drive and SCSI ID number is displayed on both systems.
Then win98 loads and no hard drive. FDISK returns "No Hard Disk
Present" or only sees the working disk on my current system. I know
to verify ID pin settings and terminator locations.
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999 03:29:55 -0400, "MrScary" <IamTr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>What is the make & model of the scsi controller?
>
>--
>Attila Szabo
> Microsoft-MVP
> Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
> a.k.a.' MrScary '
>
>"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
>: >: >"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
MrScary
....if so what mobo bios revision is in place?
Did you alter any of the modepage settings while the drives were in the raid
system?
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
news:37a491a8.3861102@news...
: I was trying not to drive everyone nuts with too many details but
: >
: >
:
Dan Rose
I do not know what a modepage is. Your talking with a hobbiest that
learns by breaking things. I seem to have realy busted this one.
DRR
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999 14:51:38 -0400, "MrScary" <IamTr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
MrScary
site to see if a newer bios exists - which might update the onboard SCSI
bios as well.
You might have better luck in the ASUS (or SCSI if its a RAID thing)
newsgroups....
comp.periphs.scsi
alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Dan Rose" <danr...@home.com> wrote in message
news:37a49e9a.7175812@news...
: Yes a P2L97-S bios 4.51PG
: >: >
: >:
: >
: >
:
Pavel
hardware because that makes no sense to force you to have another drive in
system. I have done this many times with many different systems using only a
single drive and it always worked.
--
Pavel
Dan Rose <danr...@home.com> wrote in message news:37a4f0d0.2288575@news...
> Well I got it to work.
>
> For some reason FDISK would not work unless there was at least one
> operational hard drive on the computer. I connected one of the
> unformatted drives to my working system. This time I left the
> original C drive SCSI hard disk connected and booted win98 with the
> hard disk. In a windows dos prompt I ran FDISK. I did not get the
> "No Hard Disk Present" as I did when I had ONLY the unformatted drive
> connected. I then partitioned and formatted the number 2 drive and
> then placed it in the new system. I recreated the same problem with
> one of the other 4 gig drives as well just to see if it was me or not.
>
> So for future reference FDISK will not work in a SCSI system unless
> one good partitioned drive is connected to the system.
>
> Thank you very much for your efforts.
>
> DRR
Pavel
You mentioned that the Adaptec bios was 2.01. The latest Asus provided Bios
includes 2.11 version of the Adaptec portion of the Bios and that was
included as of version 1009. It may be good idea to check for update.
--
Pavel
MrScary
The updated bios corrects a few bugs but the big fixes had to do with
BBS (Bios Boot Specification) finally working right and added new SCSIselect
settings if I remember right.
--
Attila Szabo
Microsoft-MVP
Bell Atlantic Svcs. Technician
a.k.a.' MrScary '
"Pavel" <gen...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:#V9lteI3#GA.232@cppssbbsa04...
: MrScary asked you earlier about your Bios version but you did not answer.
:
:
:
Dan Rose
For some reason FDISK would not work unless there was at least one
operational hard drive on the computer. I connected one of the
unformatted drives to my working system. This time I left the
original C drive SCSI hard disk connected and booted win98 with the
hard disk. In a windows dos prompt I ran FDISK. I did not get the
"No Hard Disk Present" as I did when I had ONLY the unformatted drive
connected. I then partitioned and formatted the number 2 drive and
then placed it in the new system. I recreated the same problem with
one of the other 4 gig drives as well just to see if it was me or not.
So for future reference FDISK will not work in a SCSI system unless
one good partitioned drive is connected to the system.
Thank you very much for your efforts.
DRR
On Sun, 1 Aug 1999 15:44:09 -0400, "MrScary" <IamTr...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Dan Rose
different systems and two different Adaptec adapters and you say you
have successfully done this operation yourself then it seems to point
to the low level format in the Adaptec bios utility program. I am not
a proponent of flashing bios until it is the last resort. Since all
my drives are now partitioned and properly formatted, I can't recreate
the problem to find out. Guess this is one for the Adaptec boys.
Thanks again for everyone's interest and offers of help.
This is what the internet is all about. It makes you feel good.
DRR
Tark
> For some reason FDISK would not work unless there was at least one
> operational hard drive on the computer. I connected one of the
If the disk is not operational, you shouldn't expect ANY disk utility to
work on it. I don't follow what you're saying here...
> hard disk. In a windows dos prompt I ran FDISK. I did not get the
> "No Hard Disk Present" as I did when I had ONLY the unformatted drive
> connected. I then partitioned and formatted the number 2 drive and
> then placed it in the new system. I recreated the same problem with
> one of the other 4 gig drives as well just to see if it was me or not.
The problem is most likely in your adapter settings. If the INT13h
handler is not taken over properly by the adapter BIOS, then FDISK will
not be able to see the hard drive. This doesn't effect Win95/98 operation
because they have their own SCSI drivers to access the disk directly
without much help from the BIOS. In fact, you can use a "dumb" controller
that will give you drive access in Win95/98 but not in DOS.
> So for future reference FDISK will not work in a SCSI system unless
> one good partitioned drive is connected to the system.
There's no such limitation in FDISK. If the BIOS support is loaded, it
can handle the drive fine. Prior partitioning is irrelevant.
If you have 2940uw, check these settings in the SCSI BIOS settings by
hitting Ctrl-A during bootup:
Under SCSI Device Configuration, find the ID for your drive and then set
the "Include in BIOS Scan" to Yes.
Get back to the top menu and then go into Advanced Configuration Options.
Set the following:
Extended BIOS Translation for DOS Drives > 1GB : Enabled
Host Adapter BIOS: Enabled (this one is crucial)
BIOS Support for Int13h Extensions: Enabled (only needed if disk > 8g)
Once these settings are in place, boot off a diskette and FDISK away.
--
Tarkan Yetiser
VDSARG
http://www.vdsarg.com
data!=information!=knowledge!=experience!=perspective!=wisdom
Bill Drake
1. Updating the ASUS motherboard BIOS to Version 1009
or later will update the BIOS Boot Specification. This
is *exactly* the code that FDISK needs to "find" an
unformatted (bare) drive. If there were bugs in the
previous BBS, then it is possible this is the reason your
machine could not "find" the SCSI drive when it was
"bare" (no partition table or MBR info on the drive).
2. Once you FDISKed the drive in a different machine,
even the older buggy version of the BBS in your earlier
ASUS flashBIOS was able to find the drive in the target
machine, since there was Partition information present
on the drive in the required Adaptec format which the
older BIOS could use to guide itself to the correct
conclusion.
3. All motherboard BIOS that supports SCSI has a bunch of
boot-options in the CMOS setup and/or SCSI-Select which
control the allocation of a particular hard disk drive as the
"boot" drive.
If these CMOS or SCSI-Select options are set incorrectly,
it is entirely possible the machine will not "see" the
appropriate hard drive as the boot drive -- especially
without any info in the partition-table/boot sector on that
drive to guide the BIOS to the correct conclusion.
4. A common configuration error for machines with an all-SCSI
disk arrangement is to leave the CMOS set to IDE as the
"first" disks found on the machine.
If no IDE disks are present, then the BIOS reports to DOS
that there are "no hard disks present" (quite correctly), and
thus FDISK reports similarly. This is not a fault of FDISK,
or DOS, or even the BIOS -- it is user error in the setup of
the appropriate CMOS parameters.
Please note that an all-SCSI system is *not* a standard
arrangement. "Default" CMOS parameters are set for IDE
systems, not SCSI systems.
5. Furthermore, there are other parameters in SCSI-Select
which are used to control which SCSI-ID is selected as
the default boot-device. Again there are defaults for this
parameter which can be overridden by the user.
The default boot-device is the device on SCSI ID0 (zero).
In multi-hard-disk arrangements, the default is to add Hard
Disk drives counting up from zero -- with *no* spaces in
the ID chain as subsequent Hard Disks are added. A single
Hard Disk Drive not assigned to ID0 in a "Default" SCSI
arrangement may not be recognized as a boot device.
BTW, all other devices are normally added from the top
down. (Eg: Tape Drive, CD-ROM at ID 6 or 5, moving
down as devices are added.
Hard Disk IDs move *up* from ID0 towards
the middle. Other device IDs move *down*
from ID6 towards the middle. )
However, if the SCSI select has been changed, then the
Boot Device the machine is looking for will be the ID
defined by SCSI-select, and could be any one of the
available SCSI IDs (except for the host adaptor ID
itself). Similarly to the "default" mentioned above,
if the Boot ID is assigned as SCSI ID4 with no device
having that ID, and the Hard Disk is really SCSI ID2,
then you have a misconfiguration which will lead to
"No fixed disks present" when FDISK goes to try to
"find" the boot disk according to what the BIOS tells
FDISK.
Consequent to the above, it is necessary in an All-SCSI
system for the user to properly set the CMOS and
SCSI-Select parameters to ensure the BIOS reports the
*proper* Hard Disk Drive to DOS as the
"bootable fixed-disk device".
This is necessary in order to ensure that FDISK can
"see" the proper Hard Disk as "Fixed Disk Drive 1",
so the correct drive is FDISKed with the necessary
partition-table and master-boot-record data to be the
boot-drive.
Hope this helps your understanding.
Best I can do for now. <tm>
Bill
Dan Rose <danr...@home.com> wrote