SCSI HD Problem

[msoneji18]

I have been running Windows XP off of my Seagate Barracuda HD for the past year. I have not had any problems until about 2 weeks ago when I purchased a new video card and tried to install it. I had an old PCI video card which I removed and then installed my new AGP card. I fired up my machine and it went through the BIOS and everything looked fine. Then suddenly I got a message that said "Press a key to restart". This happened 3 times before I decided to remove the AGP card and put the PCI card back in. After replacing cards, I still got the error. Then I placed my Windows XP installation CD into the CD-ROM drive (IDE). The installation CD found an HD that was the same size as my SCSI but it had no file system and was completely free. I could not believe this since I knew that I only had about 1 GB free on that drive. The other HDs that I have are a 200 GB and a 6 GB, both of which are IDE. The SCSI is a 9 GB. I didn't want to format the SCSI HD at the time but now I wish I would have. I can't even find it now during the XP install. It only shows the 200 GB and the 6 GB HDs. I have installed XP onto the 200 GB HD but would love to put XP back onto the SCSI HD. The only other thing to add is that as I move my adapter (Adaptec 2940U2W) to different PCI slots, it sometimes shows up as not functioning properly under XP. I'm not sure if this is an adapter problem, cable problem, or HD problem. The HD spins up and lights up with every start up. Also the SCSI BIOS finds the drive and can also verify the media without any problems. I have also tried to download Windows 2K drivers for the SCSI adapter but those did not solve the problem.
Any suggestions????

[glc]

First thing I'd check is your cabling and termination. Reseat all connectors, you may have knocked something loose when you were in there moving stuff around. Unless the hard drive (or last device on the cable) has a termination jumper, you must use a cable with an active terminator, and any intermediate devices must be nonterminated. Running a 50 pin device on a 68 pin cable with an adapter is not recommended - use a separate 50 pin cable for that. Set the termination in the scsi bios to automatic. I recommend that you set the SCSI adapter to ID 7 and the hard drive to ID 0. That controller has 3 ports - internal 68 and 50, and external 68 (I think) - and you cannot use all 3 at the same time - only any 2 of them. Don't put a PCI card in the top slot next to the AGP slot, those 2 slots share resources. Set the plug and play operating system selection in the bios to NO, and move the PCI cards around till the POST screen shows the SCSI adapter not sharing an IRQ with anything else.

[msoneji18]

glc,
i have checked the cabling and termination. everything was unplugged and then replugged in. i have an active terminator at the end of the cable. i only have this one scsi device hooked up to the adapter. the adapter is set to id 7 and the hd is set to id 0. as far as the scsi adapter sharing an irq, i don't think it is because i only have an agp graphics card and this scsi adapter card. i'll check that out and then post another message. thanks for the advice.

[msoneji18]

OK...so i've checked under the device manager in XP and found out that the scsi adapter and my agp card had the same irq. i've now moved my scsi card and it has it's own irq...19. there is nothing else that has that irq when view the resources by type. i checked windows disk management and it still can't find the drive. i am going to try and restart the computer off of the XP installation CD but i am not hopeful.

[msoneji18]

Well, apparently it is very difficult to find a place that sells the right SCSI adapter here in St. Louis but I was able to get a hold of someone who deals with SCSI drives. He told me to try booting off a Win 98 boot disk and then using FDISK to set up a partition on the drive. I was able to find the drive and it showed the correct amount of space. When I went to partition the drive, the program could not verify the drive. This seemed to think that this means the drive has died. Is this true?

[Toaster]

Howdy,
You didn't state if the system is overclocked but if it is, keep the following in mind:

1. SCSI adaptors behave differently at higher bus (FSB/Slot) speeds. Some benifit from faster bus speeds, some do not. The "faster" you run the card, the better the termination should be.

2. Recheck your system BIOS. If the primary boot device is not set to "SCSI", the system board "may not" start from the SCSI device and look elsewhere.

3. Any number of devices may provide terminator power but only 2 terminators should exist at each end of the SCSI bus. At least one device should provide terminator power, be it the card or a device. Adaptec controllers seem to "not" apply terminator power by default expecting the device(s) to provide such power.

4. If only one connector of the controller is used -and- no external devices are used or expected to be used, *enable* adaptor termination rather then use the "auto termination" feature. Auto termination is not foolproof because most devices DO NOT supply terminator power by default.

5. Virtually all Seagate SCSI/II/III drives -can- be jumpered to provide terminator power but Seagate ships the drives with it -disabled- by default.

6. Do not mix LVD/SE drives on the same cable as all drives with fall back to "SE Mode" Check drive jumpers are -not- set to "force SE". Enable terminator power but -not- terminator -enable-. In this way, the drive provides terminator power to the bus but relies on external terminators.

7. The last drive on the cable should occupy the last connector closest to the terminator. If only one drive but on a multi-connector cable, connect the drive to the last connector closest to the terminator.

8. Cable routing and type;
There are primarily 2 types of fast/wide cables, twisted and straight through.
U80 SCSI devices (ultra 80/SCSI-III) require a twisted cable, use of a "straight" 68 pin cable can lead to errors. With quality cacbles, routing is a non-issue. However, if in doubt, keep u160/320 cables away from fans and power supplies.



Cable quality when using U160/320 devices is critical to performance.
Remember, 2 primary terminators exist; SE and LVD/SE. SE terminators on an LVD device/controller with reduce performance to SE data rates (40mb/sec).
LVD terminators may be used with either LVD devices or SE devices but both types should not be mixed.

[msoneji18]

the system is not overclocked. the thing about my hard drive problems you have to remember is that the hard drive was working properly prior to installing the agp video card. so all the questions about terminating and higher bus speeds and such really don't apply. the system was working perfectly (with the exception of a slow video card) prior to changing the video card. the gentleman i spoke to on the phone this afternoon seemed to think the problem lies in the drive because fdisk cannot partition the drive.

[edfair]

One of the choices in the Adaptec SCSI BIOS was to format the drive. In a case where the partition table got banged up I would try the format then the fdisk again. But I would also try the media scan again afterwards, as deep as the controller can do it, if you have a choice.

[msoneji18]

edfair, i have tried to format the drive again and then run fdisk. fdisk found the drive and it even reported that all of the space on it was free. unfortunately it was not able to make a partition because it could not verify the drive. the scsi select bios can verify the media on the drive but the program cannot.

[glc]

Can XP's Disk Management see the drive? If so, it should be able to partition and format it.