PERC H700 drive failure RAID 10

Question

I have a Precision T7500 with a PERC H700 and a RAID 10 setup (four 2tb drives). I have 2 VDs, VD 0 with 1.73tb that has Windows 10 installed on it and the other is VD 1 with 2tb that I used for file storage.

Recently I noticed that Windows was booting up and running really slow. I rebooted the computer, booted to the RAID controller and saw the disk 0 has failed. I don't know if this was the right thing to do but I did a force offline for disk 0 and then a force online. From there everything looked OK. All disks are online and I can still see the VDs, their names and the total amount of storage for each VD. Another thing I noticed in the PD management, disk 0s SMART state says "error".

I tried booting to Windows but I do not see the Windows splash screen and the computer will just continuously reboot. It's acting like there is no OS installed. I don't know if this will help but I am currently running a consistency check.

My question is, can I do a force offline to the bad drive, replace it and still be able to boot to Windows? Will I need to rebuild the RAID? If so, how would I do that?

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

Try powering down the system, removing the bad drive then see if the system boots. If it doesn't it looks like bad data has been transferred across the stripe.

Then try adding in a new drive and see if the array rebuilds (it should do this itself)

Let us know how you get on.

Wupatt · Answer

I can try to boot the machine after removing the bad drive tonight. I have a new drive on order right now so I'll have to wait a couple days for the next step.

Wupatt · Answer

The bad disk was part of VD that the OS was installed on. Before I removed the bad disk I noticed at bootup that the controller says 2 VDs found and 2 VDs degraded. After pulling the bad hard disk, it still does it boot to Windows. :-/

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

It's not looking too good I'm afraid. Can you get a Live CD/DVD, boot to that and see if you can see the VDs? If you can see them, the best way forward would be to back up all the data, wipe the disks and start again.

Wupatt · Answer

I booted to a Windows 10 DVD and right now at the 'Where do you want to install Windows?' screen I can see both VDs and their partitions.

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

That sounds more encouraging. It now seems like it's just that the OS has become corrupted. What I would do, to be on the safe side would be to back up all your data externally if you can, then do a clean reinstall.

Going forward, it may be better to have two separate RAID 1 arrays, one for OS the other for data, so if anything goes wrong it will affect one or the other and not both as seems to have been the case here.

Wupatt · Answer

So if I add a new drive the array will just rebuild itself?

Wupatt · Answer

I plugged in my new drive, and selected make global spare. Right now it is rebuilding. I was unable to boot to Windows before I made these changes. So you think it will work after it's done rebuilding?

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

I could be wrong, but I wouldn't expect it to boot to Windows because it should still have booted, even with the failed drive. Hopefully it will though :)

Wupatt · Answer

The OS was not saved so I had to reinstall. I have two questions, can I import the VMs I made in Hyper-V before all this happened? (They are in the Windows.old folder) Is there any type of raid software I can run on the OS to monitor my drives?

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

Importing the VMs shouldn't present any problems.

As for management software, you could try the MegaRAID Storage Manager package:

https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search/?pg=Legacy+Products&pf=Legacy+RAID+Controllers&pn=All&po=&pa=Management+Software+and+Tools&dk=

I don't know if the above package will work for you or not I'm afraid. However it is supposed to be compatible with the chipset on the H700 (LSI 2108)

I would normally suggest Dell OpenManage but Windows 10 isn't a supported operating system.

Wupatt · Answer

That link took me to the Broadcom website with 310 search results. Can you give me a direct link and the exact name of the software I need to download?

DELL-Alasdair R · Answer

It's just the Latest MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) for Windows.

Precision Fixed Workstations

PERC H700 drive failure RAID 10

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