3 failed drives

[Scott_412]

I have a smart array 51 which has 3 drives with the following error:
640005: Controller has reported a critical error in the drive error log, The Drive has failed and should be replaced.
My question is how can a server operate with 3 failed drives? The server will not reboot and we have to switch it off for days before it will start up again. It seems unlikely that 3 drives failed at the same time.

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

More than disk failure it appears to be some cable/controller issue. You are lucky enough to get the error message and should take all proper backups prior to shutdown.

There should not be any problems in shutting down OS.

It is also possible that the disk error reported would be intermediate and can go away with reboot, but should not take chances.

HTH,
Devender

[Scott_412]

This does not seem to be related to the OS, when it is experiencing the problem booting up, the smart array is not detected and I get non system disk, please replace and press any key.
I could replace the 3 drives and see if it reboots successfully.

Ta.

[Devender Khatana]

Hi,

OS for sure has nothing to do with this. From OS point I meant to say that it should not have any problem in shutting down the OS?

It gives non system disk error because the logical drive available from 3 physical drives is not available which also contains the OS.

I do not think you will achive anything from replacing the drives. Same thing can be achived by recreating RAID on these disks as well after upgrading controller/disk firmwares.

HTH,
Devender