2 Drives failed in RAID 5 set also host channel defaulted to -1

[Ayman Altounji]

After a cold restart of the entire cluster system the second failed disk on the external array began to operate normally and resumed membership of the volume. Unfortunately, the volume did not come back online. Attempted to add the replacement disk to the logical volume using the reconstruct command in the CR3500 configuration utility. The CR3500 configuration utility can see the disk as available but gives an error that it cannot connect to the host sub system. The current state of host configuration for the volume is reporting channel -1 LUN 2, which is incorrect and should be channel 0 and LUN 1. An attempt was made to change this but it reverts back to -1 each time. A further attempt was made to channel 1 (the second controller) however the system reported that LUN 2 is currently in use which suggests that despite the system reporting that the other volume is on channel 0 LUN 2 it may in fact be on channel 1. To resolve the above CR3500 host channel problems a previously saved CR3500 configuration was loaded (after saving the current state). Unfortunately this did not make any difference so reverted back to the latest configuration.

Appreciate any help, regards Martin.

[Ayman Altounji]

Unfortunately, the overriding fact here is that there were two drives which failed in a raid 5 stripe set. There is no way to recover data from a two drive failure in this type of hardware configuration (note: only possible with some models of the smart array 5300 controller w/ advanced data guarding feature). You will most probably have to run the system erase or the CR3500 erase utility to get rid of previous LUN's, reconfigure shared storage and restore from backups if possible.

[Ayman Altounji]

Just a quick addendum to Ben C's response -- the system erase will only blow away theinternal storage -- not the shared storage -- to delete the Logical Units off of the shared storage ::

1. Generate the System erase disk.
2. Generate a DOS Diskette
3. Copy the CRERASE.exe from the Sys Erase to the DOS boot disk
4. Boot to the DOS Disk and run the CRERASE.exe from the DOS prompt to delete the shared storage