Drive fail in PowerVault MD1220 with PERC controller RAID 5

Araczek,

So after reading your post, it seems like the issue is more than just a failed hard drive. What raid level is the VD on this MD1220? Also we are going to need someone on site that can get into the RAID Bios and see what the status of the VD is and also what the status of each Disk is in. Being that you mentioned that in the OS it is showing as unallocated there is a possibility that either we have multiple disks that have fallen offline, or the VD has went into a foreign configuration. Please let me know what you find when you are in the Bios and I would be happy to help to get this online so we can at least get you a backup of the data.

Kenny-

It is set up as RAID 5. One drive is bad (blinking amber).  I don't have much time right now to get into the BIOS. I will maybe try a real quick look in the next 20 minutes. PLEASE check back often for my updates!

443-395-5133 work

732-245-4351 cell

Okay, more information. The PowerVault MD1220 is running on a PERC H800 in a PowerEdge R515 server. I looked in the BIOS of the PERC and it shows one VD offline, VD0. Looking at the physical disks shows Disk #0 MISSING. All I did prior to looking at this configuration is I popped out the bad drive with everything still running. The drive next to it started blinking amber.  I was going to go ahead and remount the new drive but I had second thoughts so I popped the bad one back in. Drive 0 & 1 were now blinking and still are.

So step by step what do I do now? I would think I mount the new drive, swap the bad with good, bring the VD back online .

That correct? I am just triple checking as I can't afford to do something TOO stupid.

Yes the drive in slot 0 was first to fail.  NOW drive in slot 0 is flashing green and amber and the drive in slot 1 is just flashing amber. Makes no sense to me. Please explain what all the indicators mean or/and point me to information I can investigate myself. What next?

Thank you!

With both hard drives 0 and 1 flashing, are the flashing green or flashing amber? Also, what is the actual status of those two drives? To be sure that we are on the same page drive 0 was the first drive to fail correct?

Drive 0 that is flashing green and amber means the drive is in a predicted failure state. Drive 1 flashing amber is an offline state. Being that the VD is in an Offline state we will need to try and force Drive 1 online to get the VD into a degraded state.

To do that you need to go into the Controller bios and press to access PD Mgmt. Press the down arrow to highlight HDD 1 which should say Offline. Press to display the menu of available options, and highlight the option to Force Online and press . When you do that it will require a confirmation when turning the HDD to an Online State.

In doing this we are hoping to get the VD into a degraded state. This is a last effort and may cause data corruption forcing the drive online. If this isn't a risk you want to take you may want to reach out to Drive Savers to look into retrieving data from the drives since you do not have a back up.

If you go through with this and the VD go into degraded state then you will want to Force Drive 0 offline and then replace it with the new drive to rebuild it into the array. I would advise to get a backup as soon as possible if you can get the VD to come back online.

That really depends on how critical the data is. If the data is important then I would recommend that you do the backup as soon as you gain access to the VD. If this doesn't work and you have to recreate the VD then yes all the data that will be affected is what is in that Raid 5 array.

Don't think spending money here for disk savers here is an option. I have SOME backup but it may not be current. I never had a good chance to get our Backup Exec working correctly. I will investigate to see if Backup Exec was actually not working. Backup jobs would just run forever and I always ran out of time to investigate, my fault tho.

I would only lose data on the one VD, correct?

Also in getting a backup you mean after it is rebuilt?

Sorry to keep going with this. I perhaps was not clear enough. The PowerVault is fully populated with 300GB drives. I have 3 virtual disks in this array. So my question should have been would I lose JUST the VD that is affected by the bad drive or all VD's?

Valid question as I don't have many options. BTW I DID look at my tape backups and I do have something there although it may be a few weeks out.

Thank you so much for the help also.:emotion-2:

Okay, hopefully I wont bother you TOO much more. Seems to me the VD's are all on sets of drives, not all.

PERC 800 Config

Disk Group: 0  RAID 5

Virtual Disk: 0  1952GB

7 Physical disks

PERC 800 Config

Disk Group: 1  RAID 5

Virtual Disk: 1  1952GB

8 Physical disks

PERC 800 Config

Disk Group: 2  RAID 5

Virtual Disk: 2  1952GB

8 Physical disks

Being the MD1220 has 24 drives bays then it sounds like you are correct that only one VD will be affected if this doesn't work.

As long as the 3 different VD's are not sliced across all the drives then yes you would only lose the data on that one VD. I hope that made it a little more clear for you.

Okay, forced drive 1 online and VD shows degraded state. Drive 0 shows FAILED. I don't have the option to take it offline. Only menu item that does anything is blink, but it actually doesn't change anything. Iwould think my only option is to go and replace drive?

...Alan

Also if I replace it it will buid by itself, I can boot to OS,