On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 10:28 AM, Brian Wall <kc0iog at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 10:35 PM, o1bigtenor <o1bigtenor at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Greetings
> >
> > Managed to buy a Dell poweredge 2950II server.
>
> Great servers.  They all support Intel VT for 64 bit virtualization.
>
> > What an odyssey to set up the bios!!!
> > I have 2 drives I got with the machine - - - they were part of a Raid 5
> > array.
> > Now there are only 2 drives (will never by a raid 5 array by definition)
> and
> > I need some way of formatting them so that I can turn them into a Raid 1
> > array. (Its all hardware raid on this box.)
> >
> > Anyone with any idea on how to do that to scsi drives when the controller
> > won't let me change their settings and I have no other box to put them
> in.
> > (Connector is a wee bit different than for SATA!)
>
> On a Dell 2950, you don't set up RAID in the BIOS.  As the server
> boots, you should see a message about the RAID controller.  If you
> have a PERC controller, you'll have the opportunity to press Ctrl-R to
> get into the RAID controller.  If it's Adaptec, Ctrl-A.  I think all
> of the 2950 have at least a PERC 6 but I could be wrong.
>

My box has PERC 5.

>
> Once you're in the RAID utility, you'll have to wipe out the config of
> the existing RAID.  You will likely have to import the foreign
> configuration, then clear the foreign configuration before you can
> build a RAID 1.
>

Actually just did an initialize and then things went the way I wanted.

>
> Hopefully that's enough info to get you into the interface and start
> figuring out the RAID setup.  Google is your friend, the 2950s have
> been around for some time and are very well documented.
>

One thing that was not clear was how to get things to start but I had been
told to use F2
and that did the trick and led to a successful setup.

You would think that how to do all this would be somewhat readily available,
not so. There are lots of questions from people that have (by their being
new
to the system and it not having been sold retail for at least a few years)
issues
with setting up things. Then the documentation that Dell provides is sort of
useless. Even the help files often refer to your user manual and that had
diddly squat useful in it!

Thanks for the help!!

Dee
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