Array Always showing "Waiting for Rebuild"

[Enrique Waizel]

Hi there

We have an HP/Compaq server (sold by Cisco as a 7835 server).

We have a disk array (Smart Array 6i controller).
After inserting a new disk and asking for the status for the logical drive we always get a "Waiting for Rebuild" status message instead of an "OK" message as we get with the other servers.

Any ideas about why we get this and how to fix it?

[e4services]

sounds like you have auto rebuild on and one of the drives that are currently configured it has decided has failed.

[Doug Driver]

Did you find a fix? I am getting the same message on a SMART 5I controller after I had replaced a failed drive. Not sure how to tell it to rebuild manually.

[Enrique Waizel]

Yes, we found the problem.

The rebuild process stops because the master disk has physical errors. Some sectors cannot be read.
We even tried making a copy with Ghost and it fails when it reaches the bad sectors.


HP gave us a new disk in replacement and the problem was fixed.

Hope this helps.....

[Doug Driver]

Thanks for your reply, I did find the drive it is complaining about physical errors. I just have one question. If you put in a new drive to fix the first failed drive and it never finished rebuilding(ie getting the "Waiting for Rebuild" status message). How did you replace a second drive in the array? Did you have to do a rebuild of the server after the replacement of the second drive?

Any info you could give on your process would be great.

Thank you!

[Enrique Waizel]

Yes, we had to get two good disks, recreate the array by using the Bios interface and reinstall the Operating System again.

Sorry to say that but as long as the master disk in the array is corrupted, we found no way to recover from this.

As a general recomendation, we're now always keeping a third disk as a backup. We prepare this disk by mirroring the master disk, then shuting down and removing this disk.
We then reboot the server and insert a new disk to mirror. By doing this we know that we have a spare disk that boots.
Creating a disk image file with Norton Ghost may be another alternative....


Hope this helps...