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February 5th, 2018 06:00

Problem replacing a disk in a PowerEdge T710 RAID 1 on LSI SAS 2308 controller

This problem is occurring on a Dell Precision T7610 with an LSI SAS2308 RAID adapter.

The computer was delivered new with two 512GB SSDs configured for RAID 1, forming the boot volume. It became apparent that Windows had been badly installed, so after some months of random BSODs, a ground-up rebuild was done. Before doing that, I pulled one of the SSDs, which I'll call D2, so that if the reinstallation went badly, I had that to fall back on. The Windows reinstallation was successful onto D1, but I didn't get round to reinserting the D2 for some time, despite a reminder every time I rebooted that the RAID status was Degraded.

Yesterday, I put D2 back in and rebooted, and was informed that there was no boot device. When I removed D2 and rebooted, much to my relief, D1 became accessible again so the machine started and booted into Windows.

In the LSI config 'Manage Volume' section, with only D1 inserted, it's identified as Slot 0, LITEONIT LCT-512, RAID Disk, not a Hot Spare, and Primary status. The second disk is shown as Missing.

When I insert D2, a number of changes occur in about 30 seconds or so.

  • D1's status changes to Inactive, and the second disk's status is shown as Missing.
  • D1's Slot changes to 363, LITEONIT LCT-512, RAID Disk, not a Hot Spare, and Inactive status
  • D2 appears, also Slot 363,  LITEONIT LCT-512, RAID Disk, not a Hot Spare, and Inactive status: in other words, identical to D1.
  • Both disks then disappear from Manage Volume, leaving it empty.

As I'm not familiar with this RAID controller, I'm rather wary of it. Unsurprisingly, what I specifically want to avoid is losing D1 or getting it into an unusable state. Although I have a full backup, I really don't want to go there. From reading the controller's documentation, I think one tactic might be to try to reconfigure D2 as a hot spare and then bring it back into the array with D1. That might be easier said than done, given that it appears with what I'm assuming is a spurious slot number before disappearing completely. As both disks are listed with precisely the same information, I've no way of telling exactly which is which. I have no reason to think that D2, which sat in a box for a year or so,has failed.

Can anybody suggest a method by which I can get D2 back into this controller's array without endangering D1? 

Thanks in advance for any knowledge you can share.

5 Practitioner

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274.2K Posts

February 10th, 2018 10:00

Hello,

 My suspicion is the meta data on D2 is confusing the RAID controller.

 I would try them one at a time and boot up.  One should have the current OS config, etc..   Power down remove that one and install D2 and access the RAID controller firmware utility.  I'm not super familiar with that controller GUI, but typically there's an option to wipe the disk, or reset it, etc...  Uninitialize, something in that vain. Power down install D1 and boot up.  Add D2 and hopefully you will be able to add that back to the RAID1 set and sync it up. 

 Regards,

Don

 

February 13th, 2018 01:00

Hi Don

You were right, metadata was confusing the controller. I attached the disk to a workstation using a USB/SATA cable, and used Disk Manager to remove the data partition and a Dell metadata partition, but there was an OEM partition of a couple of megs which I couldn't delete. In this state, the controller was still confused, so back on the workstation, I then used diskpart/select disk/clear, which removed the OEM partition. After that, I was able to add the disk back into the RAID.

Thanks for your help!

Jacques

5 Practitioner

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274.2K Posts

February 13th, 2018 16:00

Hello,

 You are very welcome!  I'm so glad it all worked out.

 Regards,

Don

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