Tech Support from the Trenches: Computer Beeping on Startup

For this particular problem, I'm going to cut right to the chase, because DAMN, that beeping is annoying, isn't it?

Symptoms of this problem:

- You are using a LSI MegaRAID 9260-4i card (confirmed) or potentially -8i (unconfirmed)
- On startup, computer makes LOUD beeping noise - 1 second beeps, continuously, starting midway through the boot process
- Computer DOES boot into OS (still beeping)
- In Windows, you cannot see your RAID array, either in Windows Explorer or in Disk Manager

Other things that may, but probably don't, matter:
- OS: Windows 7x64
- Lenovo S20 Workstation
- RAID array configured as RAID 0


What's (probably) going on: 
For whatever reason, the RAID controller card could not see one or more of the disks in your RAID array for some period of time - it could be cables got jostled (were you just poking around in the tower?), or that the firmware is not up to date (according to LSI tech support - I have not tested this myself). Because of this, the unseen drives were declared "unconfigured bad." You need to fix this in the controller BIOS. If you do this properly, no data will be lost (and ain't that a fine thing?).

Solution:

Unfortunately, you will have to endure the beeping while you complete the below. It will stop after you import the "foreign" configuration.

1. Power up and press Ctrl+H to enter the RAID controller BIOS.

2. Select your RAID array from the start screen menu. For you lucky people with more than one RAID array, make sure you know which one you're selecting (although it will be obvious later if you haven't selected the right one). Press Start.

Sorry - no screen caps at the BIOS level. 

3. On the homepage, you should see that one or more drives are marked in black and declared "FOREIGN" and "unconfigured bad". There should also be corresponding "missing" drives marked in red.

4. Click on "Drives" on the left-hand side.

5. Select a drive marked as bad (Select in top window and click Properties>Go). There are radio buttons on the bottom of the screen where you can change the status from "unconfigured bad" to "unconfigured good".

6. Go back to the home screen. If you've done everything right, you should see the drives you edited at the bottom in blue. The problem drives will still appear as missing - that's fine.

7. Click on Scan Devices. You should see a screen offering to import foreign configurations. In the drop-down, select "All configurations" and hit "Preview".

Holy glare, Batman.

8. Check the configuration it shows you to make sure it matches your original RAID configuration. (IMPORTANT: If the configuration is NOT exactly your original config, do not import it. There is a high probability that doing so will erase all your data.) On the other hand, if it does match exactly (and there's no reason it shouldn't), no data will be lost, which is pretty nifty when you think about the way RAID arrays work. 

9. If everything matches, click "Import". (Beeping should stop at this point.)

10. Exit the controller BIOS and restart your computer.


Did this work for you? If it did, help some other folks out and leave a comment with your system specs, anything you did differently, etc. The internet will thank you.



Contents of this post courtesy of time spent at TechnoFrolics, which is a very cool company and you should go check them out.

What I learned today: Daisy-chaining Hardware Port Multipliers, June 26, 2012

If you're like me, you grew up in a world where, for the most part, if you wanted to know something, you googled it. Discounting those early elementary school projects where they forced you to learn how to use an encyclopedia, the vast majority of the information that I ever looked for I found on the internet, for better or for worse. The modern world would be slow and impractical without the web's hive mind - in fact, you count on other people to post somewhere that they, too, have encountered Windows Error Message 7x000f941A42 (but only when booting from an external drive, on a Sunday, with a Japanese version of iTunes installed and playing a cover of "Brown Eyed Girl"). So when I went looking for a particular piece of information on the internet today, and didn't find it (!), it threw me for a loop.

So if anyone out there is wondering if you can daisy-chain SATA hardware port-multipliers (HDMs) and see the disks connected to the second HDM as individual drives (JBOD*), the answer is...no. You can't. Sorry.

Do you not know if you have this problem? Here's a handy little diagram:

All stand-alone letters here represent drives.

What we have here is a computer with a particular multi-drive compatible SATA PCI Express card installed. Into that, we plug Hardware Port Multiplier number one. Into that, we plug (some number of hard disks and) a second Hardware Port Multiplier. We connect some number of hard drives to this second HPM. Questions: can you see the disks at the second level? do they appear as individual drives or one big drive?

Answers: If this is the setup you have, and you're trying to configure ABCD as JBOD (i.e., you want them each to be their own volume), you're SOL - it violates the protocol of how the information is transferred. ABCD can (must), however, be configured as RAID (you would see them as one logical volume). See this helpful tutorial from Addonics for more on that. abcd can be configured as RAID or JBOD - I think. You should verify that with someone who's more of an expert than me. Have you checked the internet?




*RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
JBOD = Just a Bunch of Disks
Learned in the context of TechnoFrolics, a very cool company that does very cool stuff.