Proliant ML350 G5 Fails to rebuild on replacement raid hard drive.

[Wade Owens]

I have a logical drive consisting of 4 physical SAS drives in an RAID 5 configuration. One of the drives died (solid amber light). Now the logical drive is in interim recovery mode, but is still perfectly functional. I ordered two drives of the exact same model as the dead hard drive for replacement, 1 for immediate replacement and 1 as a backup for later.

After removing the faulty drive, I inserted one of the fresh, new drives into the drive bay 7. After a few seconds, the green indicator blinked on the drive blinked a few times and then the solid amber light came on again. After checking the HP System Management homepage, it indicated that this drive has failed, and needed to be replaced.

So, I replaced that new drive with the second new drive I had ordered, and this time the light was solid amber for a few seconds (10) and then finally the amber light went off and the green light went on, blinking steadily about once or twice a second. I checked the System Management page and it indicated that this drive was indeed rebuilding. I left the machine when the rebuild was at about 5 percent. When I checked back a few hours later, the light was amber, and the System Management page once again said that the drive had failed, and needed replacing. I pulled the drive out, and reinserted it. The amber light would come on and flash, go off, then the green light would flash a few times, and then the solid amber light would come and stay on.
I tried the other drive new drive again, and same result (no rebuilding).

Am I performing this procedure wrong? I was under the impression that these drives were hot swappable and the machine did not need to be turned off to replace and rebuild a failed drive with a new one. Would the drive rebuild work if I restarted the machine instead.

The operating system on the server is located on 2 SAS drives (1 logical drive) in a RAID 1 setup on the same controller as the RAID 5 mentioned above.

I have attached the Array Diagnostic Utility report as well.

Sorry for the 'novel', but I wanted to give enough details for troubleshooting purposes.

Thanks for any advice/help you may have.

[Wade Owens]

One item to correct: This server is a DL380 G5, not ML350 G5.

Sorry for the typo.

[Sylvain Gelinas 2]

As i see in your attachment, the controlller firmware (2.08) is very old...

Maybe a false failure.

Pull failed hard drive, flash to latest 5.26 with online version from within Windows. (cp010460.exe)

Reboot and try inserting the first failed. If really failed, replace with new one.

Good Luck.

[Wade Owens]

Thanks for your insight & recommendation, Sylvain. I will do that and report back with the results.

Regards,

Wade