Poweredge 2650 not detecting physical drives

To put the drives in an online state you need to create a raid array on those drives, you can't force a blank ready drive online when no raid array has been configured. Also you only ever want to use the online option in extreme cases to try and recover the array.

In the configuration screen, the menu says that pressing space on each drive will add it to the array.  The configuration menu I am using is the PERC/CERC BIOS Configuration Utility U827.

Try running a verify on the drives if that doesn't run try reseating the scsi cable that goes from the perc card to the backplane.

I dont see an option anywhere to verify the drives, and I have already reseated the cable both on the PERC card and the backplane.

BTW, I was using this as a quick reference, if it helps.

http://datawan.net:8080/myblog/post/How-to-configure-hardware-RAID-in-Dell-Servers.aspx

Can't remember exactly where it is(been a awhile since I've played with the older controllers). But I believe its where you view the drives and current configuration.

Under the Array Selection Menu there is an option for Drive Information.  Under device errors, two of the drives have "other errors" but no media errors.  None of the drives show any sort of capacity in the Drive Information menu.

"None of the drives show any sort of capacity in the Drive Information menu" thats not a good sign if it happening on all drives then it's a controller or backplane issue, unplug the backplane from the perc and use the onboard scsi controller and see if it will show the drive information.

I disconnected the backplane from the PERC card.  This time, I got the error "ASYN - Start Unit Request Failed" on each of the drives.  Both ways, though, it identifies the brand and model of each drive.  I tried going to CTRL+A at bootup and got a timeout error when trying to go to the SCSI Utilities menu.  Normally this menu only displays the scsi controller at ID# 7

Looking like the backplane is bad.

Ok, I can probably try a replacement in a day or so and get back.  Does it seem like the PERC card and drives are fine?

Well, I managed to get ahold of another backplane, and now I can press space to get one drive online, but the rest of the drives still give the original error, any other ideas?

Do you have another system you can test the drives in? Possible 1 or more may have been damaged when the backplane went out.

Not readily available.  Does Dell have any sort of bootable diagnostic tool that might shed some more light on this?  I'm not seeing any sort of hard drive errors, or any errors at all, on the LCD.

I took all the drives out except for the one that works and tried to get just that one working.  I created a raid0 array with that hard drive and it was successful.  I then tried to initialize that logical drive and ws given an error E0D76.

Try it with the perc removed, see if the integrated adaptec card has issues with the drive.

Ok, I removed the card and went into the SCSISelect menu.  This time around I was able to see all of the drives and also saw an option to verify disks, which might have been what you were referring to earlier.  When I try to verify the disks, I get "Unexpected SCSI Command Failure" on all of the drives.  The Host Adapter Status on all of the drives is "00h - No host adapter error."  The Target Status is "02h - Check Condition."  The Sense Key on ID#0, 2 and 3 is "04h - Hardware error" and the Sense Key on ID#1 is "02h - Not Ready."  

Since the backplane replacement, I can see all of the drives and hear them all spin up.

Replaced the drives, everything seems to work fine.  Thanks for the help!

You're welcome.