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I have been given a Dell Power Edge 2950 by the company I do service work for to use as a backup server. When I first got it there was a message saying "PCIe Training Error Slot 1". I managed to get rid of this by reseating the card in that slot which is the SAS RAID controller.

Now when I boot it and press CTRL+R to view the configuration it says "No Configuration Present". When I press F2 all of the options are greyed out apart from "Reset Config" which doesn't seem to do anything and pressing enter gives me the message "Configuration is not allowed. Unknown Error".

I cannot see any of the physical drives in the "PD Mgmt" menu and the lights on the front of the drives do not do anything. There are two 146GB SAS drives in the drive bays.

I have done everything I can think of but now I am thinking I have a hardware issue with the RAID controller.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I can try to get it working?

chicks
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Daniel
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2 Answers2

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We used to refurbish those machines.

Things I'd try in that situation (unplug the machine from the power socket first):

  • take out the motherboard battery and replace it

  • clear the motherboard CMOS settings

  • reseat the RAID card i.e. take it out and put it in again

  • reseat the RAID backup battery connector

  • try 'import foreign config' (F2 -> foreign config -> import)

After that I'd try another RAID card. They're available cheap on eBay.

A E
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Yes, the Raid controller seems to have died, I would open the case and get the part number from the existing controller and order a new one ( with a warranty) and replace the defective card. ( of course observing all of the safety precaution protocols pertaining to static sensitive devices.) Then after bringing the server back up configure the Raid with the desired settings.

Douglas thompson
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