Drive Light Indicators

[Ayman Altounji]

Running 5 4.3 gb Wide Ultra SCSI's RAID 5 in a Proliant 2500 (24e) server, the system froze, POST messages received, system back up and running. One of the drives lights shows the following:
Online = OFF
Drive Access = Flashes as the other drives flash
Drive Failure = OFF

According to the Array diagnostics, the last reason listed for the drive says "Drive Timout".

Does this mean drive is ready for replacement ? (ie. marked offline)
Do I replace it with the Server ON or should I shut down the server, and then replace the drive? I am assuming the drive failed and was marked to be Offline...but I want to be sure before I replace it.

[Ayman Altounji]

What type of controller is this conected to?

[Ayman Altounji]

The controller is a SMART 2/P controller, Firmware version 1.36

[Ayman Altounji]

Well the firmware is very old the latest is 4.44. Second run the online array config utility and this will tell you what is going on with the offline drive. By the way what was the POST message received?

[Ayman Altounji]

We hit the "F1" to rebuild the data. That is why I am assuming the RAID striping was rebuilt on the good drives, and then the controller marked the drive as offline. Thats my educated guess....

[Ayman Altounji]

First I am assuming that you are running NT 4.0 second the drive array may not have been rebuilt. The one drive that is off-line should not be off-line unless it is assigned as a spare drive. The array could be in a (Ready for Rebuild) state which is not good. Run the utility and find out.

[Ayman Altounji]

The reason for the drive access LED flashing is that you chose to try to rebuild. Let it roll as that may work fine.