Time required for a rebuild, Abnormal termination of a rebuild – HP Smart Array E200 Controller User Manual

Page 26

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Replacing, moving, or adding hard drives 26

Time required for a rebuild

The time required for a rebuild varies considerably, depending on several factors:

The priority that the rebuild is given over normal I/O operations (you can change the priority setting
by using ACU)

The amount of I/O activity during the rebuild operation

The rotational speed of the hard drives

The availability of drive cache

The brand, model, and age of the drives

The amount of unused capacity on the drives

For RAID 5, the number of drives in the array

Allow approximately 15 minutes per gigabyte for the rebuild process to be completed. This figure is
conservative, and the actual time required is usually less.

System performance is affected during the rebuild, and the system is unprotected against further drive
failure until the rebuild has finished. Therefore, replace drives during periods of low activity when
possible.

When automatic data recovery has finished, the Online/Activity LED of the replacement drive stops
blinking steadily at 1 Hz and begins to either glow steadily (if the drive is inactive) or flash irregularly (if
the drive is active).

CAUTION: If the Online/Activity LED on the replacement drive does not light up while the corresponding

LEDs on other drives in the array are active, the rebuild process has abnormally terminated. The amber Fault
LED of one or more drives might also be illuminated. Refer to "Abnormal termination of a rebuild (on page

26

)" to determine what action you must take.

Abnormal termination of a rebuild

If the Online/Activity LED on the replacement drive permanently ceases to be illuminated even while other
drives in the array are active, the rebuild process has abnormally terminated. The following table
indicates the three possible causes of abnormal termination of a rebuild.

Observation

Cause of rebuild termination

None of the drives in the array have
an illuminated amber Fault LED.

One of the drives in the array has
experienced an uncorrectable read error.

The replacement drive has an
illuminated amber Fault LED.

The replacement drive has failed.

One of the other drives in the array
has an illuminated amber Fault LED.

The drive with the illuminated Fault LED has
now failed.

Each of these situations requires a different remedial action.

Case 1: An uncorrectable read error has occurred.

1.

Back up as much data as possible from the logical drive.

CAUTION: Do not remove the drive that has the media error. Doing so causes the logical drive to fail.

2.

Restore data from backup. Writing data to the location of the unreadable sector often eliminates the
error.

3.

Remove and reinsert the replacement drive. This action restarts the rebuild process.

If the rebuild process still terminates abnormally:

1.

Delete and recreate the logical drive.

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