DELL R720 RAID 5 with 4 Disk, 1 Disk Failed and 1 Disk Foreign, Not Rebuilding

Hello.

he controller is PERC H710 Mini. Now the issue is I can not start the Rebuild process, only option I get is the Global HS mode. Windows is not booting, all I can get is the Controller BIOS Configuration Utility.

Ensure that you have validated backup of data. When the drive does not automatically rebuid, assign it as a Global HS to trigger the rebuild process. Once the rebuild is successful, delete the foreign configuration on the other hard drive

I have the same spec spare Hard Drive with just the chasis size 2.5" instead of 3.5", and it pops up in the BIOS as Foreign drive.

Chassis size has no relationship with foreign configuration state of the drive

Hi, I tried with slot-0 first, replaced with a new similar disk and cleared the Foreign config, state became Ready and then assigned to Global HS, state changed to Hot Spare. No Rebuild process starts.

Followed the above process to slot-3 , which was a good disk without any amber light but somehow changed its state to Foreign as soon as the slot-0 failed in the first place. Again after assigning this disk to Global HS, state changes to Hot Spare, but Rebuilding process does not start.

Please advise !

Are the drives Dell certified? Try updating the system BIOS, iDRAC and controller firmware.

Hello

Sorry for the delay.

Yes the drives are all Dell Certified. I've done the following updates -

1. BIOS : 2.4.3 > 2.5.4

2. iDRAC : 1.57.57 > 2.41.40.40

3. LCC : 1.4.2.12 > 2.41.40.40

4. PERC H710 : 21.3.0-0009 > 21.3.4-0001

I can not see any changes in the device state or any additional options for the "Rebuild" process to initiate. Can you suggest ?

Of the 4 hard drives, did you initially configure a Hot Spare. It sounds like it is the hot spare that failed and can only rebuild when any of the remaining drives fails. Boot into the controller BIOS and ascertain the status of the VD.

There was no Hot Spare pre-configured. All 4 drives were configured as such to one VD and state was Online for all 4. There is one thing that might have gone slightly wrong is that when disk-0 failed, the controller out synced disk-3 and made it partially online but foreign. Instead of foreign config import, I cleared it. This happened because at the same time in slot-0 I already added a new hard drive which required the foreign state to be cleared. All in all it might have cleared in both the disk-0 (new) and disk-3 (original).

I was reading in other posts that something called retag / reconstruction of the VD can sometimes re-form the RAID to become Online except for the one failed disk. So that means, it will bring back disk-3 in the same disk group. Can you suggest ? 

I've attached a screenshot which was taken at the beginning. After that, it showed missing in both slot.

Almost similar incident found in this post.

en.community.dell.com/.../19989570

This is the latest status.

RAID 5 can tolerate only a single hard drive failure and with 2 drives unable to rebuild, a retag with original drives is what you can attempt to do but there is no gaurantee that the data will be recoverable. Otherwise, without tested and validated backup of the data, I would recommend that you contact data recovery company.

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@Anonymous wrote:

RAID 5 can tolerate only a single hard drive failure and with 2 drives unable to rebuild, a retag with original drives is what you can attempt to do but there is no gaurantee that the data will be recoverable. Otherwise, without tested and validated backup of the data, I would recommend that you contact data recovery company.

Hello,

We have a similar issues after a reboot of our server 3 disk in our RAID-5 Array have come up as foreign. We believe the disk are ok (data integrity on the disks is good) and have not failed as they still have green lights.

Is there a way to retag them as part of the array without risking data integrity on the disks.