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.

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.

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.

Brian