Dell SAS Controller Issue

Hi All,

I'm hoping someone here can help me resolve an issue I'm having with a Dell Precision 690 Workstation. I've recently reinstalled Windows 7 Service Pack 1, all current updates are installed, and everything looks good in Device Manager. The system has two hard drives installed connected to HDD-0 and HDD-1.

It's my understanding that SAS Controllers are used to support RAID. When I disable the SAS Controller in the BIOS the system no longer boots, but if the SAS is enabled the system boots, no problem. This makes no sense to me since the hard drives are not connected to the SATA ports. I should be able to disable the SAS Controller and the system should boot. My intent here is to streamline the boot process and I would like to disable the SAS Controller since it is a slow process and serves no purpose in my case.

Does anyone have any idea what the issue is here? I'm usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out, but I have very little experience with SAS Controllers. Any help you can provide is appreciated.

PS I've tried posting in the Dell Forum but they are not being very cooperative because they claim that Dell did not provide Windows 7 drivers and do not recognize that Dell did not create the drivers for the components they use in their machines, that those components are used in other machines, and as such Windows 7 drivers do exist even if I did not get them from Dell nor that Vista drivers will work with Windows 7 in most cases. They do provide Vista drivers. The fact is that the Windows 7 install provided most of the drivers for me.

Hi VSC,
have a read here, might help


HP Support document - HP Support Center

Roy

Roy,

Thanks for the reply. The article was of no help. It dealt with use of the RAID and configuration when using the RAID and as I stated in my post I'm not using the raid. My drives are connected to HDD-0 and HDD-1. No RAID ports are being used.