DL380G7 16 bay - array keeps being rebuilt over and over

[ThomasCameron]

I bought a used DL380 G7 with 16 drive bays for my home lab. I populated it with a known good consumer grade SATA drives, based on http://dascomputerconsultants.com/HPCompaqServerDrives.htm. It seemed to be fine, but now one of the drives appears to be failing over and over.

I am seeing this in the ILM:

1 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/16/2018 10:33AM 8/16/2018 10:33AM
1
2 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/15/2018 9:55AM 8/15/2018 9:55AM
1
3 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/15/2018 2:30AM 8/15/2018 2:31AM
1
4 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/14/2018 4:16PM 8/14/2018 4:16PM
1
5 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/14/2018 11:48AM 8/14/2018 11:48AM
1
6 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/14/2018 7:38AM 8/14/2018 7:39AM
1
7 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/14/2018 3:40AM 8/14/2018 3:40AM
1
8 Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) 8/13/2018 4:51PM 8/13/2018 4:52PM
1

It seems to recover just fine, but then goes into failure again. I get e-mails like this:

Physical Drive Status Change: Slot 0 Port 2C Box 1 Bay 1.Status is now
Failed.

Spare Drive Status Change: Slot 0 Port 5C Box 2 Bay 8.Status is now
Building.

Physical Drive Status Change: Slot 0 Port 2C Box 1 Bay 1.Status is now OK.

Spare Drive Status Change: Slot 0 Port 5C Box 2 Bay 8.Status is now
Inactive.

It's happening over and over again. Basically the drive array is constantly in a degraded/rebuilding state. I know that consumer grade SATA drives are not supported. Please don't beat that dead horse. This is for a home lab, I built it on the cheap, and I am not going to toss the 16 2TB drives I bought and replace them with 320G drives that are twice as expensive, sorry.

So, two questions: 1) I have a spare drive, and I want to swap out the one that keeps failing. Can I swap it while the rebuild is happening?

2) Has anyone seen this before? Do I just have a bad drive, or is this something that's known to happen? 

Thanks!

[TVVJ]

Hello,

The above indicates that there could be a hard drive with a loose connection at Storage Enclosure Device Failure (Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) with hot spare at  Slot 0 Port 5C Box 2 Bay 8. Once the rebuild is complete, then the hard drive in Bay 1, Box 1, Port 2C, Slot 0) may be reseated.

If the issue is not resolved, it may be necessary to swap a known working hard drive to isolate if the issue is with the slot, cable or the backplane or the hard drive was originally installed there. 

Regards,

Vijaya

[ThomasCameron]

I can't easily get into the machine, so I swapped hard drives. I'll wait til it gets finished rebuilding with the new drive and see if it is stable.