Hi im building a storage pod following the backblaze build http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01...cloud-storage/. This build requires two power sources. One powers the boot drive, the mother board and 20 of the hard drives while the other powers the remaining 25 drives. When I power up the 25 drives first and the boot drive etc 2nd I recieve the message "Probing edd=off to disable" the system then freezes there. If I power up the boot drive etc then the 25 drives then it boots up normally with no problems. When ever I restart I recieve the same message since the 25 drives are already running when it boots.

I dont want to add edd=off to the boot command since i cannot have some drives not being detected all the time in my raid configurations. I have tried updating the bios and that didnt help. I have also installed a different os and receive the same message. Please help.

I am running Linux version 2.6.26-2-amd64 (Debian 2.6.26-21lenny4)
Motherboard: Intel BOXDG43NB LGA 775 G43 ATX Motherboard

All of my specs are the same as the ones listed in the Backblaze build.

Since you have no opportunity to use a conditional before using kernel opt or not, I might resort to using two relays in series, one checking each drive array for power on, then when both drive arrays are on, power arrives through both relays in series, to processor. If I understand you then you need one relay first to start some drives first, then other drives and processor. For redundancy you could have four total relays, two parallel and two parallel, and hope somebody checks the relays often enough for failure of one. Be sure to use cool led lights!

Other than that, all in software, all I can think of is an intermediate boot stage. This is pretty good though. How about on your initramfs boot, wait for all drives to spin up, then proceed to pivotroot chroot boot or sysvinit-rc or however that's done now to boot hd after booting initramfs and running a check in a special init script there and then boot hd.