Drive failed in RAID 5 - Smart Array 641

[Greg Hampton]

ML350 G3. Have a RAID 5 5x36GB plus online spare. One of the drive in the array failed. The spare became an active drive in the array. Received a replacement, DOA. Received 2nd replacement today. Put the new drive in. The ACU recognizes it as a new drive (new drive is seen on slot 5, the failed drive was slot 12), but I have no options to assign the original spare back to being a spare. I cannot expand or change the array in any way. I cannot assign the new drive as a spare. The array is not rebuilding. The ACU/ADU tells me the the drive in slot 12 has failed and needs to be replaced. The drive is no longer in the array. Any idea why the new drive didn't get assigned to slot 12? It's physically in the same slot that the failed drive was in. If I reboot the server, the controller reports the drive in slot 12 failed when it starts the array. Help!

[siny]

Very difficult issue, original issue should be due to issue on old firmware / setup / hardware.

The issue can still be resolved if you have can get an MSA4214/4314r (MSA30) and connect your Smartarray controller to the external storage.

Important step: backup your server first before continuing.

1) Remove all your drives and put into the external enclosure back to the same slot id as they were in the server. (occupying the same scsi id reference found in ACU/ORCA)

2) rebuild the failed drive using slot12 with your new hdd first (* your original spare will return to same position)

3) shutdown and remove all drives, return them to the server, array controller should be able detect and roam the drives to new scsi id positions.

Regards

[INFOR-RAM]

Hi there,

We have a similar situation. The diference, is that our server had rebuilded the raid. Now we want to add the new disk and we have no option to do so. Neither in the SmartStart and neither in the BIOS Controller.

Do we have to do the same thing? I mean to use an external storage and rebuild the array?

Ins't there an easy way to do so?

Best Regards.

NC.

[INFOR-RAM]

In our case, the server had 5 disks in raid 5 and 1 spare. One of the drives failed. Upon powerup the server, we got a question quering us if we wanted to use the Spare. We reply yes. Power down the server, remove the faild hard disk, power up and allow it to rebuild. We received the new hard disk, inserted in the tray, started the server but we have no options neither in the Controler BIOS neither in the Smartstart to make the new disk as spare. The previous spare is now working as part of the raid.

NC