topic Re: P800 , clear configuration ? in Disk Enclosures

P800 , clear configuration ?

Jolmic — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:15:11 GMT

We had a DL380G5 test server with a P800 SAS controller, connected to 8 external SATA drives.

While we where moving the server, someone dropped the server, its very broke now ;)
To complete the disaster, someone else took the harddrives out of the external bay, without noting the drive positions.
So after some 'friendly' words with my colleagues i decide to refit the controller in a Dell PowerEdge1800, and re-connect the 8 external drives.
The controller seems working fine on the Dell, however, the controller is complaining about swapped harddisks, but we really dont know the exact sequence. On Win2008R2 with ACU we see the controller and 8 physical drives, but no array's or any logical drive.
After some research on Google, i read something about disconnect all drives and clear the controller configuration.

But how to clear the configuration on a non-HP server ?
With drives disconnected, i can't enter the P800 bios with F8
On ACU there is no option to clear the config.
With ACU-CLI i tried:

=> controller slot=2 delete forced

Error: Could not clear configuration. Please check your configuration for
possible hardware or configuration problems. Use the "show" command on
devices to show additional details about the configuration.

Then i tried a SmartStart CD, but that one wont start on a Dell server..
Any ideas how to rebuild the logical drives ?

Re: P800 , clear configuration ?

Sivaramakrishna_1 — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 10:47:13 GMT

I think if u have any old ADU Report of the server, there you can find the serial number of HDDs, based on that if you re-arrange the drives you can find the luck.

Are you able to see the Smart array BIOS while system is booting. If so, try remove all HDDs and boot the system, if Controller says Logical drive missing, there it will give u a option to delete the logical drive.

If none of options worked only way is to build new array and restore the data.

Re: P800 , clear configuration ?

Kingpinkiller — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 20:01:17 GMT

Hi,

to clear the config of the P800,
you maybe could stuck it in another
HP Proliant-Server temporarily,
and use the SmartStart-CD
to delete the config.
maybebaby

For identifying the drivepositions
maybe the FileScavenger can help you:

http://www.de.quetek.com/prod02.htm

Good Luck
Ralf