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January 7th, 2006 01:00
Failed PERC 4/SC Controller (I think!). How do I replace it without losing data?
I've been having quite a bit of trouble with my RAID controller of late. We have had some pretty seroius weather and power fluctuations here of late that blew the PSU in my PE1600SC.
I have a PE1600SC with a PERC 4/SC Card in it. There are 3 Drives configured in a RAID 5 array and 1 drive on its own single drive array.
4 days ago, without warning or reason, the PERC card started reporting one of the RAID drives as failed (even though it reported no errors and the drive gives green lights and seems to spin up and down fine). The system ran well in a degraded state. Then the next day another of the drives in the RAID 5 array reported as failed without reason - OUCH - there goes all our data. The single drive in its own array still worked. Then, the next day the single drive in its own array reported as failed without reason and now we've lost both arrays and all data.
I imagine this is just a fault RAID controller that got burnt in one of our power surges - yes? Anyone have any different diagnoses? 3 drives in 3 days seems impossible to me, especially given the server sat turned off in the corner after the first 2 drives died.
So I'm guessing I have to replace the controller. I've sourced one from Dell. I know it's possible to rebuild all data from what's on the drives (in teh case of a failed controller). My question is - how do I do this? I have updated the firmware of the new card to be the same as the old and everything else is the same. I just don't want to go ahead and hit the wrong button, losing all our data, because the drive on its own array was acting as a backup drive and we don't have any recent backups after that.
Any help or clear instructions on how to replace the controller and get the drives up and working with all the data still in tact would be very greatly appreciated!!!
Rohan.
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warwizard55
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January 11th, 2006 15:00
Hi Rohan,
Did you record or remember which drive failed first? Leave that drive offline. The 2nd failed drive should be forced online using the controller BIOS.
Procedure for new controller card:
Install new card, do not connect the hard drives yet.
Enter ctrl M for the card BIOS, go to configure and clear configuration, save and exit. Power off.
Connect the drives, power up and enter into the ctrl m BIOS again. Select configure view configuration, and when asked to see NVRAM or hard drive, select drive. You should see your array info, it may still be in a degraded or failed condition.
Go into objects physical devices and select each drive in turn and press F2 to see if the drive lists capacity and has no media or other errors. Reply to me with details if you have errors here.
If the first drive that failed is listed as online, please force it offline, and force any other off line drives online. Save and exit, reboot. you should get a notice that logicial drive 0 is degraded but the system should still boot.
You can then initiate a rebuild of the offline drive.
Please note that there could be another cause of the drives dropping offline, your power supply could have been damaged by the power problems you experianced. I would advise perhaps getting a replacement P/S to make sure the system is stable.
warwizard