The mission if you choose to accept is to install Windows 2000 on an HP ML310 G4. Sound simple, except that HP does not support this configuration. To make things even more interesting, onboard SATA RAID!
Windows 2000 does not support SATA or SATA RAID natively. You have to provide a driver at the start of installation using F6. Windows 2003 does not have this problem. Since HP does not support this configuration, there are no drivers available. Using the Windows 2003 driver at HP website is able to recognize the RAID volume but on reboot to start the Windows-based installer, it gave a blue screen. Strangely this is an Adaptec driver.
On bootup, it shows “Intel 82801GR SATA RAID Controller”. Searching through Intel website reveals that it is part of the ICH7R chipset and that the controller does not use AHCI mode. Downloaded Intel Matrix Storage Manager in various versions. Some can’t recognize the SATA RAID controller, some could except it lists all the physical drives!
After two days of fruitless search, time to ask for help. A colleague remembered a similar situation and suggested using Adaptec drivers. Downloaded Adaptec’s ICH7R drivers and hey presto! The installer can recognize the RAID volume and installed the operating system successfully.
After installation, in the Device Manager, there was a long list of question marks as Windows 2000 does not have the appropriate drivers. Installed Proliant Support Pack (PSP) 7.7 for the ML310 G4. Fixed almost of it except for USB controller. That is going to cause a problem. Installed PSP 7.6, which is for the G3 version of the server and fixed the USB controller driver issue.
Time to test the RAID functionality. Pulled out and push back one of the harddisks and during bootup it shows as RAID degraded. Login to HP Systems Management webpage, it showed nothing degraded. Started the Array Controller Unit (ACU), it reported none found. It seems that HP Systems tools cannot manage the RAID card. This is going to cause a really big problem.
Since I am using Adaptec drivers that work and Intel drivers can’t, time to go fully Adaptec. Downloaded Adaptec Storage Manager v 5.00.16806. It recognizes the SATA RAID card and the degraded RAID volume!. Started the RAID rebuilding. After 24 hours it has completed 68%. Hmmm.
This chipset relies on the mainboard CPU to do all the hard work. Whereas in a standard RAID card, there is a separate dedicated CPU for the RAID computation processes.
So at the end of the day, I end up using Adaptec driver and storage manager for an Intel chipset. The RAID driver is operating in AHCI mode! Makes you wonder what in the world is going on.