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Daren Anderson, MSISFlag for United States of America

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Dell Poweredge Server - Fault detected

A friend contacted me about an older Dell PowerEdge Server - T320 (about three years old and out of warranty) - one of their drives in their RAID 5 array has an orange light blinking on it and there is an error of "PDR1101 Fault detected on Drive 2" - he tried to reseat the drive but same issue.  From what I have read, it appears to be a bad drive - is this correct?  The server is running SBS 2011
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rindi
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Look at the Dell OpenManage RAID utility. It will give you the status of the array and the disks. Then order the replacement from Dell, do a full backup, and after that replace the bad disk with the new one.
Ordering a replacement from Dell "may" be problematic if the server is using 3.5" disks

Our recent experience with them on a similar issue was they were only able to provide 2.5" disks w/ adapter.
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pgm554
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Knightsman

Sounds like a bad drive
Depending on the drive, order from Amazon or another vendor.  

If its a file server, WD Reds work great
You need the disks from Dell. They are enterprise class and have the correct firmware, and are approved. WD Reds aren't for use in servers, but rather optimized for NAS.
Your right they, are but they are MUCH cheaper and work great as a file server, OS excluded.

There is no requirement to get them from DELL, have replaced many drives in servers that are older, and saving hundreds over buying from DELL.

If they want to stick with Enterprise Drives
WD and Seagate offer Enterprise drives on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=enterprise+drives

just pay attention to who the seller is.
I don't think getting the drives from dell or not will make a difference considering the server is out of warranty, however you will want to use at a minimum Enterprise level drives.

IMO you also shouldn't mix and match.
You'll want to get the same MFG and Model as the drive you're removing

Additionally you can also get DELL drives via New Egg, though personally I'd make sure the seller and shipper is New Egg
If you are running a Dell HARDWARE RAID (H series) controller,the use of Dell branded drives is the ideal fix.

As Rindi noted Dell diags and prefailure warnings are part of the Software/hardware/firmware combo that Dell builds into their disk subsystems.

Can you use a non Dell branded (WD RE) enterprise disk ?
Yes,but lot's of these places have them at prices very near to what a non branded disk costs.

If it's a matter of a few bucks ,get the Dell.
The last one I got from Velocity was as cheap and had a Dell warranty.