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Disk fails on boot PERC 5i PE 2900
Hi all
I have a Dell PE2900 tower with the Perc 5i card in.
I have a RAID5 storage array with 4 x 2Tb Seagate SATA disks in. These have been working fine for about 12 months however now every time I reboot the server for updates etc... the drive in slot 6 fails to detect causing the array to be in a degraded state. After a few seconds the drive reappears and the array rebuilds and all is well.
Is this likely to be a fault on the disk or the Perc card?
The disks are standard ones from a 3rd party (eg not Dell Branded) so come up as uncertified however the dell shop does sell the same version.
Thanks
Paul
theflash1932
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February 19th, 2012 10:00
You can buy the same model number drive with generic/retail firmware or with Dell firmware (certified). Using non-certified drives CAN cause issues - immediate or random.
That said, it is more likely your drive has a problem than the controller. If you have not already done so, reseat that drive to ensure you have a clean connection. Do the same with the cable on both ends (backplane and controller).
Which slots do your drives occupy?
I would run diagnostics on your drives, the one in slot 6 in particular. If all pass, I would suggest you update your BIOS, ESM/BMC, then RAID (driver first) and HDD firmware.
theflash1932
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February 19th, 2012 11:00
You mentioned the disk would go offline when you rebooted, so I just figured you could reseat cables when you rebooted next, but yes, you want to have the server powered down to reseat the cables.
Your RAID firmware for the PERC 5/i is up to date. You just want to make sure your BIOS is at 2.7.0 and your ESM is at 2.37. I would also check into obtaining a firmware update for the drives from the drive manufacturer.
Online Diagnostics will run fine in 2008 R2 for testing the drives from the OS:
www.dell.com/.../DriverDetails
If you want something more thorough, you can run 32-bit Diagnostics from bootable media:
www.dell.com/.../DriverDetails
paulmh5
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February 19th, 2012 11:00
Thanks for the fast reply.
I've re-seated the drive, just waiting for the array to rebuild which takes about 5 hours :emotion-6:
I assume I'll need to power down the server to reset the internal cables without casing issues.
I currently have drives in all slots. The 2Tb disks are in 4 - 7.
What diagnotic tools can I use? I've tried some obvious ones but they are no use in windows as the drive presents as a logical volume rather than physical disk.
My current RAID firmware: 5.2.2-0072
Driver version: 4.05.01.64
Storport driver: 6.1.7601.17577
Paul
paulmh5
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February 20th, 2012 23:00
Hi.
I've run the online diagnostics after reseating the drive and it didnt show any issues. My BMC driver is at 1.33 which looks to be out of date. How do I go about updating that? I downloaded what I thought was the right thing from the dell site but it wont run in a 64bit OS. Is there a tool/method of flashing it during boot?
theflash1932
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February 21st, 2012 08:00
This is the Update Package for Microsoft Windows, taken from the list of 2008 R2 downloads:
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/2684/DriverDetails?DriverId=J5GTM&FileId=2731106031&DriverName=Dell%20BMC%20Firmware%2C%20v.2.37%2C%20A12
This will not require a reboot, but the fans will speed up during the update and could last up to 10 minutes or more.