PowerEdge: Understanding Disk Errors: PDR1001, and PDR3 on Physical Drives (PD)

Summary: This article explains what disk errors PDR1001 and PDR3 mean on Dell PowerEdge servers and the best practices to resolve these issues. By understanding these alerts and acting promptly, you can maintain storage health, prevent downtime, and protect critical data. ...

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Instructions

Managing enterprise storage health is critical for uptime and data integrity. Dell PowerEdge servers provide advanced monitoring through iDRAC and RAID controllers, which report disk-related issues using error codes such as PDR1001 and PDR3. This article explains what these codes mean, why they occur, and how to respond. 

1. What is PDR1001?

PDR1001 signals a physical disk failure:

  • Message: Fault detected on drive <number> in disk drive bay <bay>. 
  • Cause: The RAID controller has detected a failure and taken the disk offline. 
  • Impact: The affected drive is no longer part of the array, which can lead to degraded performance or data loss if redundancy is compromised. 

Recommended Actions

  1. Reseat the drive to rule out connection issues.
  2. Check iDRAC logs for related alerts.
  3. Update firmware for the RAID controller and drives.
  4. If the error persists, contact Dell Support. 

2. What is PDR3?

PDR3 indicates a physical disk malfunction:

  • Message:  The Physical Drive (PD) <PD name> is not correctly functioning. 
  • Common Causes:
    • Firmware issues (notably on certain Intel SSDs).
    • Hardware failure or connectivity issues
    • Backplane or RAID controller voltage anomalies

Recommended Actions

  1. Reseat the disk and verify detection. 
  2. Update firmware (especially for affected SSD models).
  3. If unresolved, contact Dell Support.
  4. For repeated PDR3 alerts, inspect the backplane and controller.

Affected Products

PowerFlex rack, Modular Infrastructure, Rack Servers, Tower Servers, XE Servers, XR Servers, OEM Server Solutions, PowerEdge c6300, PowerEdge C6400, PowerEdge C6600
Article Properties
Article Number: 000143247
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 09 Jan 2026
Version:  9
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