PowerEdge R730 - Perc H730 Mini - Raid 6 one missing drive

The last Image is the result of what happened. Our ESXi 6 doesn't continue booting.

I already updated all the firmwares from iDRAC (the BIOS, iDRAC, RAID, etc..)

Hello,

Welcome to our community. When dealing with a missing drive in your PowerEdge R730's RAID 6 configuration, it's recommended to use an empty drive to avoid potential data corruption or loss. The good news is that you don't need to shut down the server to replace the hard drive. The disks are hot-swappable, so you can take out the faulty drive and replace it with a new one.

Before removing the drive, offline it first to ensure a smooth replacement process. Then, replace the drive and it should start rebuilding back into the array automatically. If that doesn't happen, you can set the new drive as a hot spare to initiate the rebuild process.

To monitor and manage your array and hard drives, you can use OpenManage Server Administrator. Normally, the Perc Raid adapters will automatically detect the signatures on the drives and implement the correct RAID level. Just remember to have a backup of your critical data, as RAID 6 is a robust configuration but still not trustworthy.

Hope that helps!

@DELL-Erman O​ Hello Sir, thank you for your assistance, this is appreciated. We'll try to do that and give feedback here. Thanks!

Thanks for letting us know

Hello Sir @DELL-Erman O and Sir @Dell-Martin S ,

We successfully replaced the drive, and got all 8 ONLINE -but still our ESXI 6 got the error&notcontinue

and 4 of the drives got a S.M.A.R.T State: Error [In the Configuration Utility] What does this mean? TYIA

Hello, normally with RAID 6, failure up to 2 disks would still be okay but with just one faulty and showing a screen like this, I'd say you may have to have your controllers looked at.

@DELL-Young E​ hi sir, thank you for your assistance, we already did try to swap the PERC with the same exact model and updated firmware, but still the same problem, and no message/errors pertaining to the controller.

may I ask regarding the 4 drives that got "S.M.A.R.T State: Error [In the Configuration Utility]", if I can also change it to new empty drives? 1 by 1. TYIA

Hi,

these problems may be caused by Logical problems (e.g., bad sectors or firmware corruption). So it could be the other drives also have failure. Or your data might be corrupted. Please check what do you see undeer system logs event. https://dell.to/41lvSWn

@DELL-Erman O​ hi sir, thanks for the help, here's the logs (see images)

That logs I get from iDRAC, then I clicked one of the 4 drives that has "S.M.A.R.T State: Error [In the Configuration Utility]" -then it recommends me to 'Replace the disk' as you can see there. Should I do that or there's another way around? TYIA

Sounds not good sorry to hear that. Yes, I guessed so too. Unfortunately, failure drives need to be replaced. 

@DELL-Erman O​ appreciate this Sir, so the proper way is to build them 1 by 1 right? right after finishing 1 drive then move to the other? TYIA

Exactly! The recommended approach is to replace the drives one by one, however it's important when your data is still reachable. In normal cases, you can:

1. Replace the first drive with a new one.
2. Rebuild the RAID configuration to include the new drive.
3. Verify that the new drive is healthy and functioning correctly.
4. Repeat the process for each of the remaining drives, one by one.

Thank you for all of the assistance. Some problems are solved but I think there's more in to it. I have a different issue now. Thank you again for the help. More power!