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PowerEdge 2800 SCSI Problem - Please Help!
On boot after BIOS post: “SCSI not responding. Channel L-1: 4. 1 logical drive degraded.” After that, it just waits. When I click enter or CTRL + M, it goes to "F1 to retry reboot or F2 to run setup utilities." I believe drives are 10K Ultra320 drives. This server is about 7 years old.
We've been battling this for almost 20 hours straight. Dell support suspected disk failure of drive #4 originally, but now saying it is the OS. We have limited experience with RAID and extremely nervous about our data.
Problem started when we got drive errors. Rebooted and this started. Also got loud beep coming from we think the SCSI controller.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
theflash1932
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March 28th, 2011 13:00
First, if you are worried about your data and you MUST recover it ... call professional data recovery now for options.
I'm hesitant to give any further advice since you are working with Dell ... the last thing you need is conflicting information. It could certainly be a single failed drive ... or it could be a cable, the backplane, or the controller itself. The OS should continue to boot with the Logical Drive in a Degraded state, so if the OS is not booting, it is very likely that the OS has been damaged and needs to be repaired.
Do you have any other error messages on the screen (like "memory/battery problems"), and have you tried booting with drive 4 removed?
joshuabowser
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March 28th, 2011 13:00
Thank you for your help.
Dell is finally shipping new controller and drives, but they still insist it is OS. It would seem to me this error is more hardware related than OS and I would expect a Windows boot error, not a RAID error, but I don't know. We tried to boot with the 2003 SBS media for general repairs but that didn't work.
No other errors. We have tried with and without drive 4.
joshuabowser
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March 30th, 2011 14:00
theflash1932,
Thanks for your help and time during our crisis. In the end, it may have been OS. Dell sent a new drive, we re-created the array and restored a backup image. All is working well. I'm surprised this error was OS related and not hardware. Also odd a drive failed at the exact same time Windows did. I thought RAID was supposed to prevent data loss.
I'm glad our backups were good. We had a recent image from Macrium Reflect - worked like a charm - 100%!
Thanks again.
theflash1932
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16.3K Posts
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March 30th, 2011 17:00
Glad you got things working again. Faulty hardware can cause OS problems, but OS problems can happen on perfectly sound hardware too, so when things like this happen, it's best to test, validate, and update the hardware, then pursue fixes or prevention for the OS. At least you had a backup ... many people who believe RAID is a backup do not take precautions against its failure. RAID in fact only protects against data loss and downtime from single-disk/hardware failure. It preserves the "disk" that Windows runs on but can't protect from Windows and other software failures running on top of that disk ... that's why an actual backup is the second key part of any backup plan. So ... you did good. Take care.