PowerEdge server blinking amber light on HDD

If you have two drives and one is blinking amber (NOT alternating amber AND green) and the server is still up and running, then you have to have a RAID 1 (mirror). When you replace the drive, it SHOULD be replaced "hot"). Once you fix the drive issue, the Disk Management issue will go away.

Thanks for your response, TheFlash. The PowerEdge server has 6 physical drives.

My poweredge server which is a DC, dns, dhcp, and file server has a blinking amber light to drive 2. I did not build this server so have no idea what raid is used. Can I hot swap the drive with a new drive?

disk management states drive 3 needs to be initialized. however, the server is running perfectly fine. i'd like to fix both issues, not sure if the blinking amber light is triggering the initializing issue as well.

Thanks!

What is listed under Storage (or SCSI/RAID) Controllers?  The R710 can't be run without a controller of some sort.

You have 6 physical disks ...

In Disk Management, how many "disks" do you have listed? 
What is the size of each "disk" (NOT counting USB or CD/DVD)?
Do you know what the size of each PHYSICAL disk is?

Or, better yet, install OMSA (OpenManage Server Administrator):
http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/DriverDetails/Product/poweredge-r710?driverId=CWHRG&osCode=WS8R2&fileId=3267736217&languageCode=en&categoryId=SM

Download and run to extract, then run C:\Openmanage\windows\setup.exe.  Add yourservernameoripaddress:1311 to IE's Intranet Zone, open OMSA, go to Storage and report the controller is lists there.  You can then go to the controller, Virtual Disks and find out which RAID arrays are configured.

Ok:

What server model is this?
Which RAID controller do you have?
Is the drive blinking amber only or alternating green/amber?

It's an PowerEdge R710. There are no raid controllers under device manager > storage controllers. the drive is blinking amber only.

Thanks! Raid 5 is configured.

It shows Physical Disk 0:0:2 failed - is this disk 3? Odd because on the server drive 2 blinks amber.

You need to be careful how the drives are labeled.  The THIRD disk will be disk 2, because the disks are labeled starting with 0!

You should remove the drive "hot", wait 30 seconds or so, then insert the new/replacement drive.  If it doesn't start rebuilding automatically after 60 seconds, you can assign it as a hot-spare in the OpenManage software.

since on osa it displays the drive as 0:0:2, does that match up with the actual drive blinking, drive 2?

how do i know if the drive is being rebuilt? if not, how can i manually do it?

i appreciate the feedback!

It will show the rebuild progress in OSMA - click on Virtual Disk to see member disks.

You can't manually "rebuild" a drive, per se.  It is important not to think of it that way.  You have to assign the disk as a hot-spare, which will then kick off a rebuild, it being the drive dedicated to take over when a disk goes missing.  You can only "rebuild" a "failed" drive (not "ready").

It's safe to say the blinking amber disk (Disk 2) is the same as the one listed in OSM - Physical Disk 0:0:2?

This entire process should not interrupt the network, right? This is a DC, DNS, DHCP, File server.

Thanks!

Using OpenManage, under physical disks, use the down arrow and choose the option to blink the disk. This will also confirm which one is failed and enable you to replace the correct one.

Regards,

As Geoff said, you can ensure you have the right one by "blinking" the drive in question.

"This entire process should not interrupt the network, right? This is a DC, DNS, DHCP, File server."

It may have a slightly negative effect on performance during the rebuild but should not otherwise affect the server or data.