Trying to install Windows 2000 on SCSI drive, gives disk read error

Factual Questions
1

Here’s my setup. I have a Tyan S2895 motherboard with dual AMD Opteron processors, one 13,000 RPM 30 gig SCSI hard drive, and one 250 gig SATA drive. My operating system of choice is FreeBSD, but it has a bug in the mpt driver so it crashes when the SCSI controller is enabled. So I want to install Windows 2000 (the version of Windows with which I get along the best) on the SCSI drive so I can play around with Autocad.

So I enable the SCSI controller in BIOS and set it to boot to the CD and then the SCSI drive. I put the Windows 2000 CD in the drive and the SCSI controller driver in the floppy drive. It boots up and I hit F6 to install the driver. It detects it and I format the drive to NTFS and it installs the files to the drive. Then it reboots, and immediately gives me “disk read error”. I have verified the entire disk in the SCSI BIOS and it’s fine.

I’ve searched all over the internet for the solution for this. The only thing I could find that could be relevant is that Windows 2000 initially tries to access the disk using the old CHS style with Int 13h extensions. It says to set the SCSI BIOS to use those extensions. Well I’m not sure I know how to do that. I’ve looked around in the controller’s configuration and the only thing I could find was “CHS Mode” which can be set to “SCSI Plug and Play” or “Alternate CHS Mode” but neither seem to work. Other than that, I can’t find anything. Of course, the problem could be something totally different. I’m not a member of any Windows forums and don’t intend to sign up for any, so I figured I’d ask here. Anyone have any ideas?

2

Well, I don’t know about installing windows, but from experience with SCSI, you need to make absolutely certain that your termination is correct. Other than that, I don’t have much to give.

GES

3

Well I think I ruled out the CHS issue. I tried installing to a partition less than 2 gigs. It said the same thing. I’m kind of screwed here. Once again, I’ll ask for ideas.

4

I’ve usually had to boot & initialize from the specific floppy disk that comes with the hard drive before doing anything with the W2K CD. They’re specific to each brand of hard disk (Seagate, WD, Maxstor etc.)

If you don’t have one go to your SCSI drive manufacturer’s website and they should have a download for it.

5

What are the SCSI IDs? Windows tends to like the boot drive on ID 0 (my server has it on ID 10). Check also that Parity is consistent.

Try installing Windows without the SATA drive installed. Some time ago, I had a problem with building a server with multiple adapters and had to start with all drives other than the boot drive physically disconnected.

6

That MB BIOS had some bellyaches with muti disk array controllers. Update to the latest BIOS version. Also aake sure nothing is stepping on the SCSI adapter IRQs & addresses.

http://www.tyan.com/support/html/b_s2895.html