abraham_roots
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Adaptec 2100s SCSI RAID 1 won’t let me replace “failed” drive.
Last week I noticed an alarm in the server room. I looked around and it was coming from our SMTP server. I knew this was the SCSI controller so I shutdown and ran the SMOR util (Ctrl-A during boot). In the SMOR I see that one of the Drives (ID1) is showing “failed” and the other drive (ID 0) is showing “optimal”. “Ok, no big deal, I’ll just swap out the drive.” I think. I come back at 2AM to do the swap. I have a Seagate ST336607LW, and it’s replacing a ST336607LC. The only difference between the drives is the LC is 80 Pin and the LW is 68 Pin. They aren’t in a hot swap rack or anything the drives are internal with 68 -> 80 pin converters on the cable. When I swap the drive and run the SMOR util this time it’s showing 2 RAID’s. This is odd since there was only 1 RAID on the system. It’s 2:30 AM and I don’t recall exactly what on the screen was but it was reporting that on the 1st RAID one of the drive was “missing information” and the other was “optimal”. The 2nd RAID was showing the mirror image with one drive as “failed” and the other as “missing information”. I attempted to run repair on the array that was showing the "optimal" drive. No dice, the screen blinks and nothing happens, not even an error. I ended up reinstalling the old drive and attempted a repair with it. This time it shows only 1 RAID and I was able to run repair on it. The really annoying alarm is silenced and the system is chugging along nicely, but I can only assume the array can’t be trusted and need to revisit this issue. Has anyone ever seen this before?
ASKER
I thought the drive may have been used in another array when I saw the error. I put the drive on a Windows box the other day and it came up uninitialized. So I initialized the disk and created a new partition but I DID NOT format the disk. I get the same issue when I go back into SMOR. Was that not enough to blow away the RAID information? As for the failed attempt at a repair I knew at the time it was dicey move and I’m surprised it didn’t trash the array when I did it but I had a tarball of everything and figured I could rebuild the system if I had to (It would just be a pain, take hours, and whats the point of having a RAID if had to resort to that =) I'm thinking I should just order a new drive and give it another go. I'm just curious what I'm doing wrong at this point.
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ASKER
Ok, thanks meyersd, good information. Pointing out that bug is reason enough to award the points =)
The reason the disc dropped out in the first place was probably a parity error on read or soemthing similar - and there's a reasonable chance that it won't happen again, so, as long as the array is rebuilt and the state of the logical disc is Optimal, don't worry too much.
In the meantime, I'd suggest that you review the method for replacing the disc when the server is powered down:
http://adaptec-tic.adaptec.com/cgi-bin/adaptec_tic.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=2200&p_created=987171528&p_sid=iFPkRb7i&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9OCZwX3Byb2RzPTEzMiwwJnBfY2F0cz0wJnBfcHY9MS4xMzI7Mi51MCZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9cmVwbGFjZSBkaXNr&p_li=&p_topview=1