topic Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure in Disk Enclosures

Raid 5 Disk Failure

CharlieLimaSierra — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 22:43:49 GMT

I have an ML350 G5 with Raid 5 config with a spare. One of the harddrives appears to have failed - it has a red light.

Will the Raid rebuild by just replacing the failed harddrive with the spare?

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

Ivan Ferreira — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 08:53:04 GMT

Yes, the controller should be rebuilding the information in the spare drive, if you want to check the status of this process, install or open the Array Configuration Utility (ACU) application.

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

CharlieLimaSierra — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:08:13 GMT

Thanks. That was my understanding as well. However; I wasn't at the site when it happened. Evidently when the drives were swapped, none of the configuration was recognized...................any idea what would cause that?

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:01:11 GMT

The disk drives MUST be swapped while the SmartArray controller is under power, otherwise there is a chance that it can pick up meta-data from the wrong disk during startup.

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

CharlieLimaSierra — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:06:55 GMT

Thanks. So...........am I correct in saying the drives must be swapped when the Array Config utility is open and if so ............ at what stage - just open or when "view configuration" is open?

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:14:43 GMT

No, the ACU need not be running, even the operating system might be down.

The SmartArray controller must not be down during the swap, because it stores configuration data on the disk drives. When you replace a disk under power, the controller recognizes this, updates its configuration data and then starts the data recovery.

Re: Raid 5 Disk Failure

CharlieLimaSierra — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:26:43 GMT

Great................thanks so much. If the drives were swapped when the power was off and during the next bootup the config was not recognized is there any way to recoup - or is all data lost at that point?