SCSI drives change order at reboot.

[Down8 0]

More SCSI troubles...

 

I got a new SCSI card [2940U], and decided to throw my old 1-2gig SCSI drives in for extra room. I have one hooked to the internal connector in my case, and two others are in an exterior SCSI case. I've checked the drives, and they are set as:

Internal [2gig]: SCSI ID 0

External 1 [1.5gig]: SCSI ID 2

External 2 [750meg]: SCSI ID 3

The card says it is set at SCSI ID 7, so there shouldn't be any conflict there.

Now, everytime I restart my computer, I have the drive letters in a different order. I had the internal one as F:\, and the external ones as G:\ and H:\, respetively. At the moment, they are showing up as:

External 2=F:\

Internal=G:\

External 1=H:\

They change everytime.

 

Does anyone know why this is happening, or how to stop it?

 

[edit]

I forgot to mention, that at startup, when the Adaptec card shows it's BIOS onscreen for a moment, it labels one of the drives as D:\, while the others get no labels. [My second IDE partition is D:\]

[/edit]

 

-bZj

 

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Code:

=====ThugBox=====                 =====GimpBox=====Home built system:                Just for fun:Soyo SY-7VCA Mainboard            AST Bravo LC 4/66d[VIA ApolloPro 133A T82C694X]     Intel 486/66MHz CPU[onboard sound]                   40MB RAM [2x16, 2x4]PIII 500E @ 667MHz @ 1.73Vcore    515MB Conner Hdd[100FSB @ 133 flip chip]          3 1/2, 5 1/4Thermaltake Golden Orb            3com Etherlink III [3C509]PNY 128MB PC100 RAM               ESS AudiodriveOEM 128MB PC133 RAM [Hyundai]     Windows95 OSR2Stealth III S540 Video            Adaptec 2940U SCSI                3 SCSI Hdds [~4.25GB] LinkSys NC100v2 Ethernet          Quantum Fireball 10.3GB Hdd       HP A4331D 20" Monitor @ 1280      Logitec MouseMan [Compaq]         Win2K [url=http://thugbox.dhs.org]Server[/url] [v5.00.2195, SP-1][format => clean install]          [email]brian@infinitejones.com[/email]  Norton AntiVirus 2000             Covad 768kbps sDSL w/3com switch & Flowpoint Router [sharedx6]

 

[This message has been edited by Down8 (edited 15 November 2000).]

[Intlharvester 0]

If your boot device is IDE, you might want to try disabling the SCSI BIOS (Ctrl+A at the Adaptec boot screen). Also by convention, you probably shouldn't have a non-boot device on ID0, although it should work.

 

I've seen situations where there is some confusion between the IDE and SCSI BIOS detection order, and differences between warm and cold boots, and Windows 2000 maybe making an arbitrary decision based on what it thinks the boot device is. You also may want to use the disk mangler to explicity set the drive letters (to something like H: I: J: to avoid confusion with the CD-ROMs.)

[Down8 0]

Thanks for the advice. I ddn't even think of the ID0 as the problem. I'll try it at next reboot.

 

Also, I've tried setting them specifically, but they get changed around at next reboot anyway.

 

[edit]

For future reference, how would I re-enable the Adaptec BIOS? I plan on getting a newer SCSI drive soon, and making it the boot device. Same way?

[/edit]

 

-bZj

 

[This message has been edited by Down8 (edited 15 November 2000).]

[Intlharvester 0]

By "disabling the SCSI BIOS", I meant disabling the boot device support in the BIOS (can't remember exactly what Adaptec calls this). This would also mean that the drives would be invisible under DOS unless you loaded the driver.

 

After you do it, some BIOS stuff still happens, and you should still see the Ctrl-A prompt, but not the "D:\" detection. Older boards at least also had a way of completely disabling the BIOS via a jumper.

[FKTOAST 0]

You may also want to check how the partition was setup, like if the other non-boot hard drives are partitioned as primary drives then this may be what is happening. Any drive other than the boot drive is easier to manage if its setup with extended and logical partitions.

 

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Frank

A+, MCP Windows 98 and NT Certified

[Down8 0]

Well, after many runins with the Adaptec software, I have disabled the SCSI BIOS, and they are labeled correctly right now. I won't be ab;e to reboot to see if they stay that way until tomorrow though.

 

New problem: After installing the Adaptec EZ-SCSI 5.0 software, I was prompted to do their WebUpdate to go to 5.01a, which I did, then after rebooting, I got a Win2K popup that said it had detected new stuff and needed to restart. OK, restart: same popup. And I've gotten it at every reboot. Also, I ran WebUpdate again, and it said I should d/l the 5.01a upgrade again, which I had just installed. I'm about ot uninstall the software and see if that helps. Any suggestions?

 

-bZj