Hi Illingworth, If you dig around in the threads you will find that to install Vail or any flavour of server 2008 64bit directly onto the sata drive (no donor IDE drive required) you need to use the Silicon image driver files DIRECTLY from the windows update catalogue. There is a link to them around here somewhere (check that rainforest you have tucked under your server). If you store the files on a USB stick and get the install to look there when it cannot find any hard-drives all should go swimmingly! Beware though - WHS Vail has a nasty habit of installing to "drive 1" instead of "drive 0" so you may want to check which sata port your drive is plugged into. Cheers Scottrock
Hi Illingworth, The IDE has two channels - primary and secondary (hence the two sockets on the board), each channel is capable of running two devices - master and slave (and an IDE cable will have two connectors for this). The choice between master and slave is made on the device with a jumper - with a CD/HDD setup you should really plug each into seperate channels and set both as masters (best utillisation of caching for speed). If you only have one IDE cable - then set your HDD to master and DVD/CD to slave. there should be a picture on the HDD and DVD showing which pins to jump for master and slave. If they are both set to master on the same cable, then first come first served - only one will show in BIOS.
Hi tqhoang, I'm currently using your 2.18B with SIL55 but without PSS. Can I flash your 2.18B (F_DSDT.bat) straight over this (-bbl option) or do I have to revert back to plain vanilla 2.18B first? My processors are the usual opteron 250's so your powernow readings should be OK. Cheers Scottrock.
Scottrock - You can just flash using the F_DSDT.bat file...that should work fine with the Opteron 250 E4 OSA250FAA5BL...IIRC another user already gave good feedback for that BIOS. Just make sure you have Opteron 250 OSA250FAA5BL and not the OSA250CEP5AU since those are different. Please let me know how it goes. FWIW, the only reason people tell you to update to the official BIOS of the same version is to make sure that the bootblock will be un-touched in the event of a bad flash.
Hello Tqhoang. I haven't visited this topic for a while, I hope you remember me. My server works ok now but I still haven't got the PowerNow BIOS. Now I am afraid of flashing a new BIOS because I have changed it's settings as I also had problems with the system constantly freezing. I don't want to get this problem back. If I used a PowerNow BIOS, would the electricity usage lower a lot (in Watts)? I am afraid this server consumes a lot of electricity, since my electricity bills increased since April .
Yes, I remember you. Can you bring me up to speed with what you're running now? - Exact BIOS version (original or one of my mods) - Motherboard (rev-G or rev-I) - CPU(s)...quantity and also exact model number (like Opteron 250 OSA250FAA5BL)...use CPU-Z or similar tool to identify the chips. For the power usage, I recall one user mentioning something about the power differential being fairly significant. BTW, in case you haven't seen, I now have my own "sticky" thread where I archive all of my BIOS mods (see my signature).
First of all let me add a heap of thanks to tqhoang, one for being extremely patient in explaining the bios flash process and secondly for providing all the bios'ssss! THANK YOU! Now to my usuall..... question I flashed the bios on the server with the 2.18b from tqhoang and then flashed again with HDAMA-G BIOS v2.18B + Silicon Image I managed to installed WinXP without any problems, I actually slipstreamed the install and included the Sata drives which went fine. I received my copy of WHS on Monday and last night I tried to install WHS (2003 flavour). I had a USB key for the sata drives and the install went fine up to the point of the "Remove the disk and re boot your machine" part. After removing the WHS DVD I pressed the key to re boot and I received the error "No dick or media" ** Edit ** The Bios (screen) dosn't show any hard drives attached to the computer, all it sees is the DVD/CD Rom drive. The Silcon Image utility dose however see all 3 Sata Drives, do I need to Default the SATA ports to IDE emulation mode? Has anyone got any idea as to what I or WHS did wrong?
2u Case Change Hi All, Have any one change the case that comes with the HDAMA server it a 2u case as seen onCharles Computers Ebay shop because I am thinking of changing to a extend ATX server case And also want to change the heat-sink and fans for a bigger 940 cooler with 120mm fan or compatible water blocks the don't touch any of the components on the board the other reason for changing the 2u case i can not add any cards in this case EI Graphics card ,updated raid card or scsi controller card because there is no way of bolting the card in this case and the back plate is i fixed one with no slots for adding cards. I would appreciate any help or advice with this matter Thanks Hitman936
Mine has no capability to boot from USB. Neither stick or DVD. It will definitly boot from the DVD/CDROM attached to the IDE-channels. Mine has a IDE-HDD with xp. But I experience the following with 2 attached SATA-HDDs: After POST it tries to boot from Ethernet A, ethernet B, than it freezes after recognicing the first SATA-HDD. Disconecting both SATAs, it boots correctly into xp. when i connect the data cables to the SATAs, it mounts the SATAs correctly into XP. Do I need a bios without SIL-Raid ROM portion? Any way to skip the SIL-ROM? I do not need to boot from the SATA-RAIDs and I do not need RAID at all. But the SATA-HDDs. ???
To boot off the SATA drives, I think you need to have a RAID configuration. You could always get a PCI or PCI-X non-RAID SATA card for like $15...I've had good luck with many of the low-priced Rosewill SATA cards (they use Silicon Image chips too). Since you're using XP, I'd flash to the 2.18B BIOS with the Silicon Image ROM v5.4.0.3. That is basically the latest and greatest. See the link in my signature for details...there's a post with my bootable CD ISO image.
May be slightly off topic but My Server, with Windows Home Server keeps freezing. Sometimes when installing the updates and sometimes when I back up or transfer large amounts of data, but usually when it restarts! Is there a way to check any of the logs to see if it is a bios or a driver related problem? I am only posting in this thread coz it has loads of experts on this particular system!
Check your heatsinks and whether the thermal material (tape or paste) has dried up. If I recall correctly, you're using the BIOS flashed by my "F_SIL54" batch script right? I wonder if Windows XP/2003/WHS would run better on the last official 2.17 BIOS but with the updated Silicon Image ROM. I'd be willing build you one of those if you think you'd like to try it...but only do it after checking your heatsinks.
no, no. Booting with the IDE-hdd is just what i want. But with attached SATAs system freezes after post, because the SATA-ROM does not recognize the SATA-HDDs correctly. Say, i cannot boot with anything if SATA-HDDs are connected. Question: Does anybody know if i have a BIOS _without_ SATA-ROM, will it boot on IDE _and_ the SATAs will be mounted by xp (and xp-sata-drivers) solely without ROM? Thanks for answering.
Ok, now I understand. Which BIOS are you using now? Stock 2.17, 2.18B or one of my mods? I can probably build you a BIOS without the Silicon Image ROM, but could you check to see if there's an option in the BIOS to disable the SATA ROM? That might be easiest.
CPU-Z says: DMI BIOS vendorPhoenix Technologies Ltd. versionV2.13 RE4 for Rackable date06/23/2005 I did not find anything to disable. but I`ll have another look- I try to flash to 2.18b. Firsttimer, have no experience to do that. (gulp) Will do it on Sonday- Thanks
Anyone know exactly which CPU fan (Quiet option) is the right one for this system? I have googled and got this http_www_overclock.co.uk/product/Akasa-AK-392-AMD-AM2-Low-Profile-Copper-CPU-Cooler_7779_html but it has 4 screws and mine has only 2 screws!
Flashing suceeded. Everything is ok now. Updated to your hdama-g and 5.4.... It recognizes the SATAs well and boots off IDE into xp well without any keystroke. Thanks to your work and effort, i am a happy camper now
Low profile and quiet are hard to pull off. All of the rackmount heatsink & fans I've seen are super loud because the fan blades are so short that to achieve adequate air flow, they need to run at high RPM's...and that equals loud as hell. But for your searching, you'll want one that's designed for an AMD Opteron 940-pin socket.
Hi there, I've read this and other threads many times, but cannot find an answer to the question.... How do you setup the SATA driver on Windows 2008 x64 R2? (Don't care if it's RAID or non RAID) There are a lots of 'suggestions' but there appears to be no definitive answer. I have flashed the BIOS to the correct version (2.18b with SATA v 5.5.0.0), and I have downloaded drivers from all the suggested sites. Now Windows will recognise the drivers, but I still have the 'unsigned driver' messgae. I've even changed the INFs for the Microsoft drivers, but this causes the same error message. The 64 bit version of Windows doesn't seem to have the ability to turn off driver signing. I have looked in gpedit (group policy) and it's just not there. The only possible way that I can see to make this work is to use the WDK to create my own signature for these drivers, and to run Windows in 'Test Mode'. If there are any more elegant solutions out there, then I'd love to hear them thanks