Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces
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Has anyone else run into this issue? I have an external usb drive connected to an R730 and it takes about 45 minutes before it will advance from the Initializing firmware interfaces screen. From what I have seen from other posts online there appears to be a similar issue with some Dell models and having a usb drive connected. I have never run into this in the past with other R720 or R730 systems.
All Bios and firmware updates have been applied. Is it possible I just have a bad usb drive connected? Once the system does boot and I try to diskpart it is extremely slow. When I try to create a partition on the usb drive it ends up telling me the disk is not ready. I am not sure if this is because it is a bad usb drive or because of the initial issue at boot.
I am not going to be onsite for a couple days but was wondering if anyone else has seen this before.
Thanks in advance.
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@syko24 You probably need to use a different USB drive. It's possible that the drive is bad, it is also possible that the port isn't supplying enough power for a spinning drive. What ever the issue actually is, just replace the drive.
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@travisdh1 said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:
@syko24 You probably need to use a different USB drive. It's possible that the drive is bad, it is also possible that the port isn't supplying enough power for a spinning drive. What ever the issue actually is, just replace the drive.
That is definitely something I will try. I have also noticed that I have two arrays setup. The second one is severely delayed in becoming available after the system does finally boot.
Here is one of many posts I have seen online with similar issues. I have tried unticking the collect inventory option. Again I won’t be onsite until Friday so I can’t test different drives yet.
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Just disabled the usb ports through iDRAC and everything booted up fine. Guess it is either the drive or some bug that Dell needs to release a patch for.
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@syko24 said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:
Just disabled the usb ports through iDRAC and everything booted up fine. Guess it is either the drive or some bug that Dell needs to release a patch for.
My money is going to be on a bad usb drive.
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Boot order settings? If the server was set to boot from USB before HDD could it have been trying to boot from the removable drive and timing out?
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@notverypunny said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:
Boot order settings? If the server was set to boot from USB before HDD could it have been trying to boot from the removable drive and timing out?
That's also possible, but usually it passes in seconds for a working USB device.
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@dafyre said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:
@notverypunny said in Dell R730 - Stuck at Initializing Firmware Interfaces:
Boot order settings? If the server was set to boot from USB before HDD could it have been trying to boot from the removable drive and timing out?
That's also possible, but usually it passes in seconds for a working USB device.
Which might indicate a bad USB controller if the boot issue occurs with USB enabled but no drive attached.
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So I ended up making a special trip because it was bothering the crap out of me. I brought a different usb drive with me to test. The replacement usb drive had the exact same problem. I plugged both drives into my laptop and both worked fine. Finally, I reformatted the drives from my laptop and then reconnected to the server and everything worked perfectly. I shutdown the server a couple times and did a couple cold boots just to make sure everything stuck and all was well. The original formatting of the drives were all NTFS so I am not sure what difference reformatting them from my laptop made but seemed to do the trick.
I appreciate all the feedback from everyone.
Thanks again!!
