Messed up raid when trying to fix

Question

I have a Poweredge server with a Perc S100 controller with 4 hard drives (not hot swappable) in a RAID 1 configuration.

I had one hard drive that was degraded (drive 2). I disconnected the wrong hard drive (drive 1) and booted with it disconnected and went into the RAID configuration screen and it told me that one drive had failed (the one I disconnected) and of course the other one it said it was degraded like usual. The computer wouldn't boot into windows and I quickly turned it off and reconnected the hard drive.

When I booted and went into raid mode, it now said drive 1 and 2 were degraded. How do I fix this issue? I would like the good hard drive to show that its working and not degraded before I replace the bad hard drive.

It does boot and it does work right now.

I have a powedge T310 server running windows server 2008.

DELL-Chris H · Accepted Answer

RaidProblems,

Ok, it sounds like you actually have 2 raid 1's, or possibly a Raid 10, as you can't have a 4 drive raid1. If both were degraded, and in the same array span, then it wouldn't boot.

What I would suggest is to go to the controller BIOS and assign drive 1 as a Hotspare, and it should start a rebuild. After that then do the same for the replacement drive.

Let me know how it goes.

raidproblems · Answer

Thank you for the help!!  As far as the hard drive that showed degraded first, does it always mean the drive itself is bad? Or did the data just get messed up?

DELL-Chris H · Answer

Not nessacarily,

If the raid controller gets really out of date, it can cause communication timeouts with the drive. It could be an issue with backplane, or cable. Best thing is to be certain the controller is kept up to date on updates, and then attempt a rebuild on that drive. If it fails the rebuild I would be confident there is an issue with the drive.

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Messed up raid when trying to fix

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