3ware SATA RAID - Reboot and Select proper Boot device

Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

In the process of setting up my 15-disk array, I kept encountering the above error message while attempting to boot into CentOS 5 off of the 3ware 9650SE array. If I turned off the offending drive (or removed it), the error went away and CentOS would boot properly.

This particular error message seems to be generated by an MS-DOS / Windows boot loader on the hard drive. Some motherboards seem to prefer this particular MBR, rather then loading GRUB/LILO as desired. So, when scanning the drives, they tend to fixate on whatever boot loader they find first.

If you hook the machine to a regular SATA port (or use an external USB device), you can overwrite the first few gigabytes of the drive with zeroes. At which point, adding the drive to the array will no longer cause the problem. Attempting to remedy the issue while the drive is connected to the 3ware controller will not work as the 3ware controller seems to hide the first few cylinders of the drive.

(It might work in JBOD mode, but you can't setup a JBOD disk on the fly using the tw_cli command on a 9650SE controller. So an external USB enclosure / tray / drive toaster is the best route.)

Updates:

- After playing with a little more, it seems to be a BIOS issue where the BIOS gets confused if the 3ware controller presents more then 12 units to the BIOS.

- The 3ware controller does not "hide the first few cylinders of the drive". Instead, it seems to store it's metadata for the drive at the end. Aside from the problem of losing data in the last few cylinders, you can take a drive configured as a "single-unit" and hook it up to a regular SATA controller with no issues.