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RAID 5 drives out of sequence

Hello Experts,

I have a client that decided to do some spring cleaning and removed the drives from his Dell PowerEdge 2400 so he could vacuum. This is a server running hot-swap SCSI drives only, 3 drives, on a Windows 2000 Server box. The problem is, he doesn't know what order he took them out or how they go back in. We have tried all possible combinations to re-insert the drives, but it will not boot. We tried the various combinations in all open drive bays in case they were not in the usual open ports. No matter what, we can't get the server up. Does anyone have any idea how we could go about discovering the correct ordre for the drives?

Thanks!!

Intense_Angel

You could put one drive in turn on the server, press ctrl+S, I think, just watch for the prompt to enter the raid scsi controller tool and then you will be able to identify them one at a time.

Most likely you will need to rebuild the raid also...not wipe them out...but just rebuild.

mikeprotech

ASKER

Will try and let you know.

mikeprotech

ASKER

Unfortunately, when we hit the Contral-A (Control-S wasn't an option), no matter what drive was inserted into the drive bay, it came up as drive 0. From this we still can't tell the order. Is there something else I should be looking for when I run the SCSI utility? Thanks very much for responding so quickly!

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Intense_Angel

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mikeprotech

ASKER

Two questions, if I may:

1) Can you rebuild without booting? [These drives hold the data and the OS.] I didn't see that option when booted to the SCSI utility, but then again I wasn't looking.

2) If you can rebuild, won't it matter what order the drives are in? Are you saying we can rebuild no matter what order the drives have been inserted and the data will be properly re-ordered on the drives?

Thanks again!!

Intense_Angel

I have made this mistake before and got out of it by rebuilding. The controller on the server should have the option for rebuilding. All the drives are the same basically, the controller handles the id's.

mikeprotech

ASKER

Please do not close this out yet. We have been waiting for client approval to perform the suggested operation. Before we can do the rebuild as suggested, we have to upgrade the firmware of the SCSI card. The client has to approve the cost of the time required to do all of this. Will post again as soon as I know anything. Thanks!

Venabili

This question is abandoned again...