Hard disk drive related issues, Drive failures and rebuilds – Dell PERC 4/SI User Manual

Page 65

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Hard Disk Drive Related Issues

 

Table 6

-2

describes hard drive related problems you might encounter, along with suggested solutions.

 

 

Table 6-2. Hard Disk Drive Issues 

 

Drive Failures and Rebuilds

 

Table 6

-3

describes issues related to drive failures and rebuilds.

 

 

Table 6-3. Drive Failure and Rebuild Issues

 

The BIOS Configuration Utility does not detect a replaced physical drive in a

RAID 1 array and offer the option to start a rebuild.

 

After the drive is replaced, the utility shows all drives online and all logical

drives reporting optimal state. It does not allow rebuilding because no failed
drives are found.

 

This occurs if you replace the drive with a drive that contains data. If the

new drive is blank, this problem does not occur.

 

Perform the following steps to solve this problem:

l

 

Access the BIOS Configuration Utility and select Objects—> Physical

Drive to display the list of physical drives.

l

 

Use the arrow key to select the newly inserted drive, then press

<Enter>.

 

The menu for that drive displays.

l

 

Select Force Offline and press <Enter>.

 

This changes the physical drive from Online to Failed.

l

 

Select Rebuild and press <Enter>.

 

After rebuilding is complete, the problem is resolved and the

operating system will boot.

 

The system takes a long time to boot during a RAID Level Migration or Check

Consistency operation.

 

This is normal behavior during a RAID level migration or consistency check.

Problem

Suggested Solution

 

The system does not

boot from the RAID
controller.

 

If the system does not boot from the controller, check the boot order in the BIOS.

 

One of the hard drives in

the array fails often.

 

This could result from one or two problems.

l

 

If the same drive fails:

¡

 

Format the drive.

¡

 

Check the enclosure or backplane for damage.

¡

 

Check the SCSI cables.

¡

 

Replace the hard drive.

l

 

Drives in the same slot keep failing:

¡

 

Check the enclosure or backplane for damage.

¡

 

Check the SCSI cables.

¡

 

Replace the cable or backplane.

 

Critical Array Status Error

is reported during boot-
up.

 

One or more of your logical drives is degraded. To recover from a degraded logical drive, rebuild the failed drive in each array.

Upon successful completion of the rebuild process, the logical drive state changes from degraded to optimal. See

Logical Drive

Degraded

in this section for more information. See

Rebuilding Failed Hard Drives

in

RAID Configuration and Management

for

information about rebuilding failed drives.

 

FDISK reports much

lower drive capacity in
the logical drive.

 

Some versions of FDISK (such as DOS 6.2) do not support large disk drives. Use a version that supports large disk sizes or use a

disk utility in your operating system to partition your disk.

 

Cannot rebuild a fault

tolerant array.

 

This could result from any of the following:

l

 

The replacement disk is too small or bad. Replace the failed disk with a good drive.

l

 

The enclosure or backplane could be damaged. Check the enclosure. or backplane.

l

 

The SCSI cables could be bad. Check the SCSI cables.

 

Fatal errors or data

corruption are reported
when accessing arrays.

 

Contact Dell Technical Support.

Issue

Suggested Solution

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