(Slightly O/T) Perc 3/DI RAID5 rebuild headaches

[Bahadir Kiziltan]

On Nov 19, 2007 1:33 PM, Hostmaster
<Hostmaster at computerservicecentre.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> Has anyone else had problems rebuilding RAID5 arrays on a PERC3/DI? I have a
> stubborn old PE2500 with the aforementioned controller in it, running the
> latest firmware I can find (2.8.1.6098), and it had a three-disk RAID5 array
> when a disk failed. As usual, pulled the disk, and swapped it out for a
> known good disk (same model, same capacity), it shows up in the PERC BIOS,
> but it downright refuses to rebuild onto it, even if the disk is assigned
> either Array or Dedicated hotspare, and if I force a consistency check, it
> fails immediately.
>
>
>
> The server is still under extended warranty and this problem has been raised
> with Dell Tech Ireland, however they are completely stumped on how to fix
> it. The only reference I could find was
> http://www.experts-exchange.com/Storage/Q_21751705.html (scroll down to the
> bottom), but although I have a backup of this machine, I would rather not
> blitz the array unless I have absolutely no choice.
>
>
>
> Has anyone got any magical voodoo incantations I can perform to get this
> array rebuilt?
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Richard Garner (A+, N+, AMBCS, MOS-O)
>  Hostmaster

Apart from the failed one, the other drive(s) would be defective so
that rebuild process can't be initiated.

Perform the surface scan on drives. Get into Perc BIOS by pressing
CTRL+A during post then select "SCSI Disk Utilities" and run the
option called verify disk. It probably finds **faulty** sectors that will
be re-mapped by the controller.

Bahadir.