DL320 G3 - Won't boot OS

[Henry Goverde]

I have a DL320 G3 server with 2 80GB SATA drives mirrored through the onboard adaptec controller. One of the drives (Port 1) is being reported failed by the SMART monitoring feature and the server bugchecked and will not boot the OS anymore. The other drive (Port 0) is being reported as healthy. I have tried booting with the bad drive installed and pulled out but neither way lets the server boot. (see attached jpg)

Anyone have any suggestions on how I can get this server up? The replacement drive is ordered and will be here Wednesday but I would like to get the server working until then.

Thanks in Advance,

Henry

[HP_Sammy]

Hello Henry,

I think the embeded controller just supports raid 0/1 so if it was raid 0 then we have lost data restore it from backup.

If it is raid 1 then try rebuilding it manually from ctrl+a utility during post add the failed drive as spare and rebuild and see if it works follow steps :


3. Restart the system.
4. At the appropriate prompt during POST, press the Ctrl+A keys or the F8 key to access the RAID
Configuration Utility.
5. From the menu, select Array Configuration Utility.
6. From the main menu of the array configuration utility, select Add/Delete Hotspares.
7. Assign the new drive as a hotspare. This starts the Rebuild task. All the data from the good drive is copied
to the new one, and the original RAID 1 array is re-created.


1. From the main menu of the array configuration utility, select Manage Arrays.
2. From the List of Arrays, select the array that you want to rebuild.
3. Press the Ctrl+R keys to begin the rebuild process.


Thanks regards
Sammy :)

[Henry Goverde]

Hi,

Thanks for the response Sammy.

I replaced the failed disk with a new one and went through the steps you outlined.
I accepts the new drive as a hot spare but it does not rebuild. Screenshots are attached.

Does anyone have any idea's as to why this is happening?

Seems sort of useless to have a RAID 1 configuration if the server won't boot or rebuild when you replace a failed drive.

Thanks in Advance,

Henry

[KarloChacon]

hi

what you can try this:
power off server
remove your HDDs
go to BIOS -> Advance options
select clear NVRAM/boot disk
power off server
insert first HDD and after some time the one that should be rebuilding

if that does not help I might say your RAID 1 damage...

regards

[Henry Goverde]

Hi,

Yes I went through the clearing of NVRAM with the same results afterwards. I also called HP support and they were not able to help or suggest any steps other than those submitted here. The server still would not boot.

I finally tried what I didn't want to end up doing and used the array utility (CTRL - A) and started to delete the array. It actually gave me the choice to destroy the partitions on either of the disk or both of the disks. I thought I would try just the new disk first and then restart the server. Low and behold the remaining member showed up as "Legacy" during the array initialization and actually booted correctly. Now at least I can ghost what is on that drive, re-create the array (which will be data destructive) and re-image the data back onto the array.

The bad part is that I have many of these servers at various customer sites and hope that they don't all behave the same way. The Adaptec SATA array utility on these servers appears to be not quite ready for prime time. Hopefully this is only an isolated issue but only time will tell.

Thanks for your help.

Henry

[Henry Goverde]

See prior update. It's not the solution I had hoped for but it could have been worse.

Beware of these controllers - I would have thought that a RAID 1 configuration that lost a drive would continue to work properly and rebuild when the bad disk was replaced but the way it happened makes me ask why even bother to use mirrored drives on these servers - they appear to be useless.

Thanks,

Henry