Virtual Disk Degraded, No bios found, WinServer 2008
Came back over the weekend to a situation. On server restart, reported "no bios found". Looking into Perc300 Virtual Disk shows degraded. Physical Disk 0-00 and 1-01 show ready. Upon second restart, no Virtual Disk is showing and Physical disk show the same. Upon restart, server says, no bios found, then rolls over to try and boot through net with no success of course.
Can I create a new virtual disk with no data loss to start back up? I have no idea what caused the issue.
Can I create a new virtual disk with no data loss to start back up? I have no idea what caused the issue.
ASKER
Perc300. From what I've read, it's not the best. Live and learn. Last data backup was 5/22 so I do have something. As far as the server back-up, I don't know. I am stuck at the splash screens. If I try to rebuild the virtual drive, does it delete data, or just try to set the raid up again? EDIT: No, I don't have a controller in house at the moment. To make matters worse, new server is approved, it has not arrived. I'm looking to SAVE data. If I can bring it up long enough to make data back-up I'd breath a lot easier.
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Check the health of your disks in your array using the utilities you have available for that, and replace those disks that are reported as bad. With your utilities you should also be able to check the state of the rest of your server, and you should be able to upgrade firmware if it is out of date.
Don't know this particular PERC but others have an option to re-tag an array. What you do is create a new logical disk using exactly the same parameters as before but select the option to not initialize it. The initializing process may zero out the data but with that turned off it just rewrites the metadata that tells the controller the configuration. re-tagging doesn't work if drive roaming has happened (i.e. disks were moved to different slots) as the data will be mis-ordered.
ASKER
No physical disks were moved. I don't see an option to "re-tag" the array. I did run diagnostics and the report came back as bad sectors on one of the drives. I just don't understand in a Raid1 why the virtual disk came up as degraded then went completely away. The missing bios is due to that of course. With one disk showing bad, I'm handling the other with kid gloves. I think my best option to be pulling the HHD's and replacing with new. Then move forward with what back-ups I have. I don't want to destroy any data that I can get to on the current drives. Any thoughts?
If this is a Dell Server you should know that Dell warranties their RAID Controllers for the life of the server. You can contact Dell support and they can connect via OpenManage (if installed) and they will perform any software fix possible, or diagnose what is otherwise wrong.
They will also hold your hand and advise how to make sure you don't lose data.
Jeff
TechSoEasy
They will also hold your hand and advise how to make sure you don't lose data.
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
It is a Dell Server. Dell R210. That is good to know. I know that OpenManage is not installed, but seeing as how the server cannot boot it wouldn't matter if it was. If they can get it to boot, that's a different story. Thanks for that heads up though. I will give them a shout.
ASKER
Best advice was rebuilding the array WOULD erase the data. Sent the disk for data recovery, which we did not have to do. The cloud storage had crashed over the long weekend but the local back-ups were still intact. Replaced the bad controller, installed new HDD's and did a full recovery from back-up. Thumbs up and a testimony for multiple backups to multiple locations!
Do you have a similar Perc controller? It seems to me that your controller is going bad.