LH3 Server HDD Issue

[Navaneeda Kumar]

HI,

We havea HP LH3 server installed with 4 Hard disk(9GB Ultra 2 HDD). One of the hard disk shows failed in Netraid Utility. We installed the New Hard disk , but still it shows as Failed. We tried Rebuilding the hard disk, but it Failes.
Other 3 hard disks are working fine.
IS any other Issues???

Thanks

[kris rombauts]

Hi,

one of the most occuring reasons where a rebuild fails is because their is another 'good' disk in the array that has a bad spot and as such the data cannot be reconstructed 100%. In order to check if this is the case pls copy the raid.log file from this system.

Do this:

1) open Netraid Assistant
2) close it again
3) copy the file c:\Program Files\Netraid\client\raid and post it here in the forum

The step 1 and 2 can be optional but they are needed to make sure the last error buffer from the Netraid controller is copied in to the raid.log file.
If the logs prove this is the case, you can only recover by taking a full backup, reinitialise the array and restore backup.

If you have the necessary Netraid management and monitor s/w installed, the Windows System.evt and Application.evt logfiles can also help here.
To avoid this kind of situations it is alwayshighly advised to have the consistency cehck running on your system, this runs i.e.weekly and corrects this kind of issues, thus preventing a rebuild problem of this nature whenever it is needed in the future.

Other reasons for a failing rebuild can be the disk backplane, so to isolate this you could try to insert the new disk in another slot and try the rebuild.

HTH

Kris

[e4services]

Agreed. Bad data is usually the case when this situation arrises and the only recovery is Backup and Restore onto new disks (do not trust those old disks anymore), I am sure the old disks are at their useful life

[Sean T. Craig · Accepted solution]

Hi Navaneeda,

When a good drive fails to rebuild, it is usually caused by a bad sector on one of the online drives. That doesn't mean the disk is bad, just a bad sector which can be corrected or remapped. The first thing you want to do is check for errors on the online drives. If none of them show errors, it is likely because you need to update the firmware on the controller and re-try the rebuild. This should cause a media error to appear on one of the disks.

Now the hard part; the NetRAID Controller will not correct bad sectors on your disk. To do that, you need to move your disk from the RAID controller to a standard SCSI controller and run a Media Verify on the drive. If your drives are on the embedded NetRAID, you can disable the RAID by using the CMOS Setup and it will change your NetRAID to Symbios SCSI.

Press C at POST when it prompts you and it will take you to the SCSI config utility. Press on the first channel and then choose "Device Selections" from the list. Highlight the drive with the errors and press . Scroll down to "Verify" and press . This will scan through the surface area of the disk checking for errors. When it finds one, it will stop and ask what you want to do. Select "A" for ALL and the process will continue until it is complete.

When you're done, restart the server and turn your NetRAID back on in the CMOS setup. Boot the server normally and retry the rebuild, especially on the original drive. There is no reason to throw the drive out if there's nothing wrong with it. If it fails to rebuild, or it's not responding or showing 0MB capacity, then use the new drive and rebuild it.

Let us know how it goes and assign the appropriate forum points.

Best of luck,

Sean T. Craig Sr. C.E.T., M.C.P.