IBM X206M Server with SBS2003 boot problems with RAID

Issues and Solutions to problems found with Windows Server 2003

Moderator: stephen

IBM X206M Server with SBS2003 boot problems with RAID

Postby stephen » Fri Oct 27, 2006 7:47 am

I installed Small Business Server 2003 on a IBM X206M with raid 2 x160 Gb Hard Disk drives (In a Raid 1 Mirrored config in Bios), 1Gb Memory and a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz.
The installation went OK. I turned the server off overnight and the next day the server starts loading Windows 2003 server for a minute then stops and reboots.
I started in safe mode and found that Windows SBS 2003 stops after the loading of DRVMAIN.SDB

I have tried these options.
1. Install Broadcom Firmware Update
2. Update the BIOS
The above items have not fixed the problem

I gave up trying to fix above problem.
I have erased the disks, set up the raid 1 and reinstalled the Operating System again.
The system seems to be working OK, except after a day I realise that the raid 1 has dropped out in My Computer I can see a 160G C: drive and a 160G D: drive that indicates my raid 1 is broken. (Normally you just see the two drives as one C:)
I tried to get the two drives to mirror from the first drive to the second using the Adaptec Bios Utility. But I could not get a working system.

I could not get a system with raid 1 working. So for the 3rd time I am erasing the disks and reinstalling the operating system.
This time I have a working raid 1 and the sysyem is rebooting OK and seems OK. I have installed Exchange Service Pack 2.

I went to restart the server after a week of running OK. Now the server will not boot.
I checked the Adaptec Raid Ctrl+A config and found that the raid was not set as bootable.
I change the array to bootable but the system will not boot from the array.
The system shows this error
on the screen as it starts to boot up.
1962 Hard Drive does not contain a valid boot sector


I rang IBM service and they are sending a tech to replace the motherboard.
To get the server to boot in the meantime I disconnected one of the mirrored drives.
and the server can now boot on the single drive with the array in the state of degraded.

Sub Note! Also check if you have a USB Drive plugged into the server as the bios will try to boot from the USB Hard Disk or memory Stick first and that will cause the Hard Drive does not contain a valid boot sector error. The BIOS on this server does not seem to have an option to disable USB boot.
stephen
 
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Location: Brisbane

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