Hard Disk Failure Help

[Steven Chen_1]

I have one disk not being mounted after reboot. Ioscan shows it, but dd returns error.
Vgdisplay is showed the followings:

***************
vgdisplay: Volume group not activated.
vgdisplay: Cannot display volume group "/dev/vg03".
*****************

I would like to see if I can force it to be activated now that it is 'dead' already in this case. HP support says it may die, but I would have other opinion before I replace it (loss it).

Can someone help?

Thanks a lot!

[David Child_1 · Accepted solution]

First, what does ioscan show for this device? Does ioscan -fnCdisk show it as CLAIMED?

What does diskinfo /dev/rdsk/cXtXdX show?

To manually activate the vg you can try:

/usr/sbin/vgchange -a y /dev/vg03.

David

[David Child_1]

Also,

If it does appear dead and you really need to get it active to get data off, you can try taking it out and slapping it a few times then put it back in. This has saved me a couple of times in the past.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Does ioscan display it as CLAIMED. If not, you are toast. If this is a hot-plug drive, you might try unplugging the drive and reinserting and hope that the Force is with you.

Next try vgchange -a y /dev/vg03, if that fails and there is more than one disk in the VG, then try to override quorum, vgchange -a y -q n /dev/vg03.

This is exactly the reason why you always mirror data; this would be a minor inconvenience rather than a probable let's go find the backups.

[vinodan]

dear Steven,

In ioscan S/W status shows claimed or No_HW ?.Please checkup this .
If claimed weather it responds to
#diskinfo -v /dev/rdsk/cxtxdx command
if it gives output
do as following

#vgchange -a y /dev/vg03(if it is no mirror)
#vgchange -a y -q n /dev/vg03 (with out quarum checking)
refer man vgchange for further switches

regards
vinod

[Steven Chen_1]

ioscan gets claims.

diskinfo returns that the disk has 0 size.

vgchange -a gets errors like Quorum not present, or some physical volume(s) are missing"

I did not use "vgchange -a y -q n /dev/vg03", would that work?

It is a dead disk, isn't it??

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Steven,

Well, I wouldn't play taps for it just yet - but I'd get the bugler warmed up.

As Clay mentioned, try to reseat the drive if it's a hot-swappable drive. THEN if it reports 0 size on a diskinfo command - it's toast.

Rgds,
Jeff

[vinodan]

Hi
if you are encountering an error that quarum is
not present that means multiplle disks are there in that vg.this you can verify by
strings /etc/lvmtab
If there are multiple disks even though you are activating it using lq option you may not be able to mount all lvols(because defective one may be containg lols).
How many lvols are there in vg03 ?
regrads
vinod

[Steven Chen_1]

There is only one vg for vg03 from lvmtab. There is only one lvol in vg03.

vgchange command with any parameters does not make a miracle.

Thanks a lot guys, it's dead then.