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PE 2900, PERC 5/i, 4 Disks, Raid 5, Drive 0:0:1 Failed and Can't Get It Online
I was having a strange problem with the sever 2003 Standard. Occasionally, when a programs saves a data to SQL, the data is not there and had to retype in. Looking at the events, it showed the battery error on the PERC 5/i Integrated.
I ordered and replaced the battery and the error is gone, but that's when I noticed the drive 0:0:1 was not flashing green as the other 3 drives. From the controller BIOS, 3 drives showed "Online" but this one showed "Foreign Configuration" and won't let me do anything. So, thinking the drive is bad, I removed it and bought another identical used drive then replaced. But the OMSA showed same "Foreign Configuration". After googling, learned to clear it, and now it shows "Ready" state.
Is this normal? Prior to replacement drive, the capacity showed sum of 3 drives and had remaining space of 29GB. After replacing the drive, it still shows 29GB free. One of the instruction from a forum suggested setting the drive to "Hot Spare", so I did, and the drive is still on "Ready" state and not "Online" as in other 3 drives.
So, with Raid 5, is one drive always used as Hot Spare? Can I get a capacity to the sum of all 4 drives? Is the "Ready" state what it supposed to be instead of "Online"?
Please help.
DELL-Chris H
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March 28th, 2014 06:00
Multibyte,
With a 4 drive raid 5 configuration there isn't a hotspare within the 4, if that is what you were meaning. With 4 drives you have the free space of 3 of them, the last drives worth of space is used for the parity information of the raid. So picture having 4 drives and you take a 1/4 from each, totaling 1 drive. That is the redundancy across the drives in the array. Giving you the ability to lose a drive and maintain production as that single drives information is across the whole array, not just on that drive.
The difference in Ready and Online is simply that Ready is for unassigned drives, and Online is for drives assigned to an array.
In regards to the issue you are having.
In OMSA is there a Rebuild option under the raid controller?
Also, have you attempted to reinstall the original disk?
multibyte
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March 28th, 2014 09:00
Had old version of OMSA (v5.0), and it didn't have option for Rebuild. I've downloaded the latest version of OMSA (v7.4.0) last night as well as latest driver, and it still doesn't show Rebuild option. The only option related to rebuild is "Set Rebuild Rate".
Noticed that the controller shows "Degraded" state, and also the firmware version is 5.0.1-0030. I'm gonna upgrade the firmware to latest 5.2.2-0072. And see if there's a rebuild option. Then I will try to old hard drive.
So, from your explanation, the replaced drive 0:0:1 is correct as it should be hot spare?
Thank you...
multibyte
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April 6th, 2014 21:00
Forgot to mention,
I bought a used drive to replace the drive and got the above results. So I replaced back to the original drive, and still gets the same result.
After clearing foreign configuration and assigning as hot spare, both drives shows Ready, and both errors on Rebuild.
Please help.
multibyte
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April 6th, 2014 21:00
I have just finished updating the BIOS, all firmwares and drivers to latest. The Physical Disk 0:0:1 still shows Ready. But in OMSA still has no option to Rebuild, for the drive it only has options for Blink, Unblink, and Unassign Global Hot Spare.
When I directly enter the controllers config util during boot, it does show the option to Rebuild. But when selected to Rebuild, it errors "Error! Start Rebuild operation failed !"
Other 3 drives show Online, but disk 0:0:1 shows Ready instead of Online. Is this normal?
Thanks.
theflash1932
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April 6th, 2014 21:00
You can't "rebuild" a "ready" drive - only a "failed" drive.
You need to assign the "ready" disk as a "hot spare" to begin the rebuild.
multibyte
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April 7th, 2014 12:00
Drive has already been assigned as Dedicated Hot Spare and in Ready. But it will not Rebuild. I've also tried assigning as Global Hot Spare, and it still will not Rebuild.
The hot spare disk info shows: