noise on insertion

[Ayman Altounji]

Dear Forum

I have a U1 attached to a SMART2DH in a PWKSN 5000 Twin Ppro running Win 2000 server.

There are 4*9.1GB SCSI-3 drives at RAID5.

On insering a 5th drive with the same part number (I want to run a spare having had 2 fail in the past) I get a loud mechanical clicking noise (every 1/2 second or so), a bit like a relay. If inserted from a shutdown (power off) and then reboot, I get the same noise then no lights and the array boots into win 2000. On running the ACU, I get the wizard for an unconfigured drive, but only the option to create a new logical drive, not to extend (greyed out). At that point I cancel the opp.

I have heard the same noise once before when a drive failed in situ (amber light) and I rebooted, got the clicking on boot up and then amber again. Whan I replaced with a new drive no prob, rebuilt fine.

Is the drive faulty, and what is the noise? PS The history of the drive in question is unknown, although it looks new.

Many thanks

Berni

[Ayman Altounji]

Sounds like a bad drive to me, though I would expect the Amber LED to come on as well (unless it's THAT bad).

[Ayman Altounji]

Sounds like it's just the drive cage disconnecting that drive (the clicking). You do hear that when a drive fails, but the amber light does come on.

However, since this drive was not a part of any array, it might not technically be considered failed, thus no amber light.

Try just making that drive a member of it's own array, and see if it works. If so, then you *should* be able to set it as a hot-spare for an existing array of same-sized drives.

Note that the Smart 2/DH doesn't support extending arrays, or migrating. You'd need one of the new array controllers for that. But you can add hot spares to an existing array, so give that a shot.