Problems Booting without RAID

[satindemon4u]

So at my place of work, way before me, whoever built one of our video services installed a RAID card. We don't really need it in there. So, I removed it and now can't boot. Imagine that. I am assuming this is because the machine is still trying to boot in RAID and can't so it just hangs at the BIOS splash screen. However, it does flash this very quickly. I tried doing CTRL - I and that doesn't work. CTRL + I + Shift doesn't work either. Nor does DELETE or F2 or F12. Options? F8 and F9 do nothing either.

EDIT: When unplugging two out of 4 of the hard drives I can boot no problem.

EDIT2: After unplugging I managed to get into BIOS and change the SATA config to AHCI instead of RAID. After doing this though, windows fails to start every time. However, if I leave it set to RAID I can boot no problem. (with two hard drives unplugged)

EDIT3: So, I decided to cheat and while windows was running plug in the other two hard drives. Windows recognized them and installed drivers and everything fine. So I rebooted and still, hung up at the MOBO splash screen and all I can do is a hard reset.

 

[newtekie1]

F10? Look up the motherboard and see what button gets you into the BIOS. You probably need to change the boot priority to the right drive.

Were any of the drives connected to the RAID card?

 

[T-Bob]

F10? Look up the motherboard and see what button gets you into the BIOS. You probably need to change the boot priority to the right drive.

Were any of the drives connected to the RAID card?

+1 Also what motherboard model and RAID card? That info would be helpful

 

[satindemon4u]

Apologies. The mobo is an Asus P8z68-V/Gen3

As for the raid controller it is a Dell PowerEdge PERC 5i SAS Raid Controller. Here is a link to it (I believe this is the same exact one...)

http://www.databug.com/MX961-p/MX96...PwW8EpZKPCidxjTzZFbtcxg7RVj9J7_S7TBoCwZvw_wcB

Like I said before, I unplugged the sata cables to it, pulled the card and then installed sata cables from each hard drive directly to the mobo and now I get that screen and no keys get me into bios or the raid setup.

EDIT: When unplugging two out of 4 of the hard drives I can boot no problem.

EDIT2: After unplugging I managed to get into BIOS and change the SATA config to AHCI instead of RAID. After doing this though, windows fails to start every time. However, if I leave it set to RAID I can boot no problem. (with two hard drives unplugged)

EDIT3: So, I decided to cheat and while windows was running plug in the other two hard drives. Windows recognized them and installed drivers and everything fine. So I rebooted and still, hung up at the MOBO splash screen and all I can do is a hard reset.

 

[satindemon4u]

F10? Look up the motherboard and see what button gets you into the BIOS. You probably need to change the boot priority to the right drive.

Were any of the drives connected to the RAID card?

Just noticed your second question. All drives are connected to a hot swap. The raid card was connected to the hot swap. Raid > Hot Swap > Hard Drives

That's how it WAS. But we decided that we didn't really NEED the raid card in there so I took it out and connected the drives from the hot swap directly to the mobo. This is when issues happened.

 

[Disparia]

Moving that Corsair Force 3 to SATA port 0 (or moving the Seagate currently in port 0 into port 5) may put it as a first boot device automatically without having to go into the BIOS.

 

[satindemon4u]

Moving that Corsair Force 3 to SATA port 0 (or moving the Seagate currently in port 0 into port 5) may put it as a first boot device automatically without having to go into the BIOS.

Just moved them around like you said, no luck. What is just kinda stupid about this is the fact that if I unplug two of the drives and plug them in after I am booted, the computer picks them up just fine.

 

[newtekie1]

There may be RAID configuration data written to the drives from the perc card that is confusing the BIOS, causing the hang.

 

[satindemon4u]

There may be RAID configuration data written to the drives from the perc card that is confusing the BIOS, causing the hang.

While I was able to access the drives after plugging them in after windows boots, we did a full wipe on them. At this point what we have working is 3 drives. It seems that's the max it will do. If we drop in the 4th, we get the hang up.