Fixing my Rocket Raid 2320 Boot Issue

As a web developer, I needed to have a place where I can work on sites which are in development before they are uploaded to my clients domains.  A few years back, I bought a Dell server, and loaded it up with some extra hard drives and a Rocket Raid 2320 raid card for redundancy.  Once setup, I had a great little raid 5 array, which allowed me lots of storage space to save my work, as well as keep it safe from hard drive failures.

Recently however, after my server installed some updates and did an automatic reboot, it failed to come back online.  Definitely not the best scenario for someone who works remote as often as I do.  Checking into it, the server was locking up at the bios level while checking on the Raid Status.  The computer was fine, the drives were fine, the system would just lock on the bios…  Anytime my computer rebooted, or powered down, it would not restart.

After some searching on the internet about the issue, I found that holding down the END key when rebooting would bypass the raid bios screen and allow you to boot into windows.  This was somewhat relieving that I could load back into windows and the system would run as usual, but was little good to me if I was on the road or at a clients site.  Without manual intervention my system would not come back online.

After much searching, I found a post that removed the BIOS level raid check all together.  The steps to making this happen were as follows:

1. I created a bootable DOS USB stick using a program called Rufus.  It is a lightweight program that works great for creating bootable media and includes freeDOS with it.
2. I downloaded the latest firmware for my Rocket Raid 2320 and added it to the USB key.
3. I rebooted the server and started into the DOS environment off the usb key.
4. Using the downloaded firmware files, I entered the command load.exe /e 0=0 rrxxx.xxx (the name of bios image file)
5. I rebooted once again.

Much to my delight, my server did reboot back into windows normally, my raid array however was not there.  Using Disk Management I realized that windows was not seeing the hardware at all.  This solution was not going to work for me, it did effectively remove the BIOS level Raid drivers, but in doing so removed it from my system completely.

I rebooted into the DOS environment and using the load.exe file reinstalled the bios level drivers for my RocketRaid.  The bios lockup was still happening, but at least I could get into windows if I held the END key when rebooting.

Eventually I came across another article with another solution that actually worked, and has been working to date.  This also required the bootable usb key, and the latest Rocket Raid drivers as well, but with some differences while running the driver software.  The steps I took again are:

1. I created a bootable DOS USB stick using a program called Rufus.  It is a lightweight program that works great for creating bootable media and includes freeDOS with it.
2. I downloaded the latest firmware for my Rocket Raid 2320 and added it to the USB key.
3. I rebooted the server and started into the DOS environment off the usb key.
4. Using the downloaded firmware files, I entered the command LOAD.exe /C xxx.xxx (the name of bios image file)
5. I then tabbed to the menu of items and disabled INT13 and Reallocate EBDA.
6. I then saved the settings and continued with the flashing.

Once completed I rebooted the system without the USB key and it loaded into Windows just fine, raid array was showing and completely intact!  Problem solved, and has been working great ever since!