Disk LED status won't stop blinking green

Question

Hello,

I just bought new SAS hard drives (Seagate Enterprise Performance 10.9K ST1200MM0129) and I put them in my PowerEdge R620. This server already has another SAS drive (Seagate ST1200MM0007), and the two drives are in RAID 1.

My problem is that the disk status LED of the recently bought drive won't turn off. It's stays like in the picture below.

I don't know what does that mean, and I don't know if there is a problem. I'm beginning with Dell PE servers.

Please help me ! Thank you in advance ! :)

DELL-Chris H · Answer

CyrilBuchs,

To confirm, is the light on steady or blinking green, and if blinking is there any order to it?

YOu can look at the table below for the different meanings of the blinking light.

Blinks green two times per second --- Identifying drive or preparing for removal

Off --- Drive ready for insertion or removal
The drive status indicator remains off until all hard drivers are initialized after the system is turned on. Drivers are not ready for insertion or removal during this time.

Blinks green, amber, and off --- Predicted drive failure

Blinks amber four times per second --- Drive failed

Blinks green slowly --- Drive rebuilding

Steady green Drive --- Online

Blinks green three seconds, amber three seconds, and off six seconds --- Rebuild aborted

Let me know what you see.

CyrilBuchs · Answer

Hello Sir, Thank you for the answer ! The light is actually steady. There is no blinking (I need to change the title). I don't know why it won't turning off... Best regards, Cyril Buchs

CyrilBuchs · Answer

And I also need to precise that the LED that is steady green is the Disk Status LED (LED located at the bottom of the locker on my photo).

DELL-Chris H · Answer

A steady green status light simply means the drive is online.

CyrilBuchs · Answer

Yes, but that's not the correct LED. The LED that is steady is this one :

DELL-Chris H · Answer

So there is no drive present in the slot? Does it do that if installed in a different slot?

John0943536 · Answer

Hi Chris,

I have the same issue on my Dell T320. I have a Perc710- controller on RAID6 ( 7 drives) . Since 2 days ago , the hard-drives activity indicator from all 7 drives are blinking green continuously on all drives . The hard-drives status indicator is steady green .

My OS is installed on an NVMe and I'm using an USB with Clover to boot.

As soon as the server POSTs, all 7 drives activity indicators starting to blink green and are not stopping unless I turn off the server. I dont even use the array and the drives activity indicators are blinking green.

When the issue started , I noticed that the Lifecycle Controller system inventory started as well but before didn't and it was set to enable the whole time . I set it to Disabled and the inventory didn't showed up but still drives indicators is flashing green .

If you need anything please let me know.

Thank you .

DELL-Erman O · Answer

Hello,

Thanks for the information and images. As I can see iDRAC is also up to date. Here, if the activity indicator is flickering green, it means as below. The activity LED flickering green when the drives you have created the RAID 6 array are used. Something might be running in the background or if you just created RAID 6, it might be initialization going on in the background.

I don't think there is a problem, but you can check the SEL via iDRAC to be sure. Can you check system event logs? Do you see any errors? You can clear the SEL log after viewing it. https://dell.to/3gP5IDF;

Activity Present

The drive is currently being read or written to

Drive Offline

Drive is ready for insertion or removal

Hope this will helps!

John0943536 · Answer

I forgot to mention that is not the disk led status as the thread is mentioning. Is the activity indicator . Also some pictures from my server hoping that will help.

John0943536 · Answer

Hello Erman,

As I was reading your reply the activity link stopped from blinking. That is odd since I have created the array 2 days ago. I didn't knew that is taking that long for the array to do something in the background .

I am checking the logs frequently and I don't see any errors . Please see attached. The only one error is the one regarding the PSU as I am using only one PSU at the moment but besides that everything looks ok.

DELL-Erman O · Answer

Background Initialization Rate task changes the amount of system resources dedicated to the background initialization task. Initializing can take time it's laying out the redundancy for the whole volume for data+free space. if a full initialization is selected can take a long time. You can speed up the process by changing the rebuild rate via OMSA. I would like to share the article here https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/dell-openmanage-server-administrator-v8.3/omss_ug/setting-the-rebuild-rate?guid=guid-b09c0743-1e58-42e8-b92d-103aa5be613e&lang=en-us

John0943536 · Answer

Thank you very much !

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Disk LED status won't stop blinking green

Activity Present

Drive Offline

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