NetRAID

[Bijoy P. Joseph]

I've one HP LC 2000 netserver. RAID 5 is configured with 4*18GB disks. The server got switched off at the time of rebuild. After that, its not taking one disk in the RAID. i tried from NetRAID Asst. s/w also. If I rebuild it fails at 50%. Disk is tested in another server, which is working ok. Red led is blinking on disk. status shows failed.

[Greg Carlson]

Bijoi,

If I read this right you were in a rebuild state when the server powered off? Failing a rebuild doesn't necessarily mean that the hdd that is failing rebuild is a bad drive. Rebuilds fail because of corruption in the parity stripe or because of media errors on another hdd. Check the hdd properties of all your hdds regardless of their state. If any other hdds have any media errors your at a restore/recovery option. Try putting the failed hdd in another slot. If you fail the rebuild at 50% again you most likely have media errors on a hdd that is online or you have corruption in the stripe-> either scenario requires a restore/recovery because you won't be able to complete a rebuild.

Good luck..
Greg

[Marcin Golembski_1]

I agree with Greg that it is most probably media error on one of the drives (with one disk out you can't tell if you have data corruption in a stripe because you can't compare the calculated parity to anything :-)

You could try to connect the drives to the built-in SCSI controller, enter the SCSI BIOS during boot and run Verify on each disk. Verify will scan all sectors on a disk and report errors; it might be able to correct some of the errors by remapping the bad sectors. The rebuild of the array may succeed after that. If it doesn't... you'll need your backup.

[Amruth]

Hi,

I would like to add one more message that if you do a verification it is Ok ....but once i had lost all my data by doing verification.

So better to have backup....

Good luck,
AM

[Bijoy P. Joseph]

This disk is tested & find working. Can I try make it online. Will it lose data?

[Greg Carlson]

Bijou,

NEVER force a hdd online that has been failed... You will corrupt the array.. The only time you want to force a hdd online is when you have more than one hdd failed.. Even in that situation you still want to leave one hdd failed and if you can access data then do a rebuild on the last hdd. That is the only way to ensure your parity is not corrupt. Your failed hdd has been out of the stripe for quite a long time.. imagine how much has changed since the last time it was talking with the other drives.. BY the way like I said in the very first post it is probably one of your ONLINE hdds that has an error.. Not the Failed one.. Check ALL HDD's..

Ciao,
Greg