RAID won't rebuild

Yes, from the boot RAID control I think it shows as foreign. I'll have to get there and reboot and try clearing that. Thanks.

Hi,

For the OS version the logon screen sounds like the right version.

For the drive replacement, what size was the drive that was in there and what drive are you replacing it with? If you reboot into the controller with CTRl+R during post and press CTRL+N and go to the PD mgmt. page what does it show for the drive state of the new drive? If the drive shows ready you should be able to set it as a hotspare. If it shows foreign, you will have to clear the foreign configuration first. This is done from the foreign view tab if you press F2 when the controller is highlighted.

So, wording is very important and can make all the difference.

"partition" is not a term that should be used to describe a virtual/logical disk on a controller (a RAID array) at the hardware level. A partition is a logical division of space at the OS level.

That said, it doesn't matter which is the case (a 1.75TB partition or VD), you cannot make it bigger than 2TB. Here is why:

1. Each virtual disk is presented to the OS as a separate "disk".
2. Windows cannot use a "disk" larger than 2TB unless it is first converted to GPT.
3. Windows cannot BOOT to a GPT "disk" unless the OS was installed on it in a UEFI-enabled environment.
4. The 2900 does NOT support UEFI.

So, even if the 1.75TB was an OS partition on a 4TB virtual disk, you couldn't make it any bigger because you would have to convert it to GPT (data destructive), but the 2900 cannot boot to a GPT disk. IF the 1.75TB was a VD and the OS partitions filled it entirely, you still couldn't make it any bigger because the PERC 6 doesn't support Online Capacity Expansion in that way (must add disks to the array, not replace with larger ones).

The new disk I added wasn't marked as foreign, it was marked as failed. From the boot RAID control I was able to tell it to rebuild that disk since it's redundant twin is okay, and it started rebuilding but ultimately failed. 

There is another disk in the array that is marked as foreign. I guess I need to reboot again, see if I can get it to be cleared as a clean disk and see if the controller will use that to rebuild that piece.

This would be easier if I had an extra slot or two to try out disks, set hot swap disks for the RAID to use to rebuild itself etc, but all the slots are filled and assigned to raids. But the Data virtual drive is only half in use. It's four 1Tb drives (8 with redundancy) as a 4T virtual drive, but then only 1.75T was ever partitioned and used. over 2T are sitting as unassigned space. If there's a way to tell the controller to reconfigure this virtual disk as a 2T disk and remove the other drives from it, then I'd have those slots and drives to work with. Is there a way to tell the controller to reconfigure the virtual disk without destroying it's data?

Thanks.

I don't want to make it bigger. I want to make it smaller. It's a VD composed of 4 disks (8 with redundancy) but half the space in it is unassigned (in windows disk manager). So I would like to make the VD use only 2 disks (4 with redundancy) so I can use the other 4 for other things. I want to know if it's possible to get the controller to let me remove drives and make a VD of fewer drives without destroying the data. I realize this would require the controller completely rearranging what data is on which physical disk. That's what I'm asking if it can be done. I realize I can just back up the data and start from scratch. That's a lot of downtime for the server which I'm trying to avoid.

Thanks.

You cannot remove disks from an array in an attempt to reconfigure on a Perc 6 or any other Dell LSI controller.

I see ... coming at it from the opposite angle. No, you can never make a RAID array smaller - there is insufficient space for the controller to make that kind of change. Reconfiguration of any kind TO OR FROM a nested RAID level (10, 50, 60) is not supported on any Dell/LSI controller.

Rats. So from scratch it is.