Drive Failure on 5300 Conroller

[Gene Garces]

I'm wondering if there's a possibility of recovering from a multiple (2) drive failure in a RAID 5 configuration. The server was operating fine until a maintenance reboot and the controller now detects two drives as being faulty. Server was operating normally before the reboot and no alerts were triggered. Any suggestions much appreciated...

[Oleg Koroz]

Firstly check if 1 Logical drive detected over POST.
Load W2K use F6 for 5300 controller and verify if DATA available from C:\
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/21374.html Driver

[Oleg Koroz]

I must be still sleeping you can disregard firs message; I missed RAID 5, though Mirrored set. Boot with SS CD and launch ACU see Status message for Logical Drive.
What message you used at POST F1 or F2 ?

[JohnWRuffo]

Gene:

With the system powered down, remove and reseat each drive from the cage. Then power on... do your drives still show failed?

[Gene Garces]

KOV - I believe I used F1 and just chose to disable drives.

John - I did reseat the drives to no avail.

I contacted HP support and they recommended updating the firmware for both the controller and the drives (Wide Ultra3s). Fortunately, there's ADG on the controller and the server still boots up (just tried it out). Now the controller is asking to repair the failed drives.

History: The backplane was replaced two previous times and a recently replaced hard drive is one of the two that failed. I just contacted HP and they are sending a tech out to replace the backplane for a third time. She said that it's a possibility that the SCSI cable is bad. Is it possible that the 5300 controller is going bad?

[Oleg Koroz]

From understanding hard to believe three times SCSI backplane needs replacement
Check if Firmware on the Drives and Array controller is Up to date go by Model
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/storage/us/index.html
More likely it's cable if all firmware is up to date.

[Gene Garces]

Thanks John, I updated the firmware on both the controller and the drives to no avail. Hopefully it's just the cable like you said. I guess we'll find out tomorrow when the tech comes out.

Thanks a lot guys for your input!