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December 29th, 2021 18:00
T320/H310 Failed drive replacement in RAID1 array - replacement disk marked as foreign.
I'm having a number of issues in replacing a failed drive in my server.
My configuration is a little "oddball", in that I have two RAID controllers in the box - an H310 connected to two SATA drives in the 5.25" ODD bays (RAID1/OS), and an H710P connected to the backplane, running a RAID6 array (Data).
Recently, one of the disks in the RAID1 array was marked as "failed", and the array marked as "degraded". I removed the failed disk, and replaced with a near-identical unit (same size, type etc.)
That replacement disk is now marked as "foreign", and I'm unable to find any way to add it to the array. Whether I use the H310 BIOS configuration utility or OMSA, it is always marked as "foreign", and I'm unable to utilise it in the array.
I am unable to add it as a hot spare, or indeed do anything else with it.
I'm beginning to think that I'll need to pull the original (still good) disk, and replace it with one identical to the "new" replacement I installed and completely reinstall the OS (which I'm obviously keen not to do).
Is there any way I can "force" the controller to add the new disk to that RAID1 array, and thus have the array rebuilt?
On-The-Move
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December 29th, 2021 18:00
Hmmm...I may have stumbled on the answer. It appears that the "new" disk was being viewed as though it had a foreign (RAID) configuration on it. I was able to "clear" that foreign configuration, and the disk appeared as "ready". I then added it as a hot spare, and a few moments later, it's status changed to "rebuilding". Fingers crossed...
DELL-Shine K
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December 29th, 2021 22:00
foreign means this new drive was part of another virtual disk before. As the drive have metadata of its previous virtual disk it is shown as foreign. By clearing the foreign you deleted this metadata which made the drive to be available to use in another virtual disk.
DELL-Young E
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December 29th, 2021 23:00
Hi, On-The-Move, thanks for choosing Dell. I saw the picture of the LEDs you posted and it looks just fine by me. May I ask why you are doing what you're trying to do?
On-The-Move
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December 30th, 2021 00:00
Hi DELL-Young E,
Please take another look at the picture I posted. Yes, the 8-Bay (RAID 6) array is doing fine. But that's not what I was posting about. LOOK UP!
See the two icy box caddies above the 8-bay array? Those two bays hold the OS HDDs, configured in a RAID1 array. It was one of those that had failed, and, having added a replacement drive, I was having issues having it recognised as "ready", so the H310 controller would rebuild it.
As Dell-Shine K notes, the replacement drive had likely been part of an array at some time in the past...I needed to clear its residual config. so the controller would recognise it as in a "ready" state.
From there, it was as simple as adding it as a hot spare to the RAID1 array, and the rebuild kicked off a few minutes later.
I'd off-lined the Server during the process (booting OMSA from USB). As a result, the rebuild took ~ 3 hours and is now complete.