How to add disk back into RAID-5?

[Davis Phillips]

Greetings Kevin,

I believe you should be able to assign the new drive as a hot spare
(ctrl + s if memory serves) to the array.
This should let it rebuild with the new drive.

Regards,
Davis Phillips
Lead Technician
Intensive Hosting(tm)
* US Free: 1-800-961-4454
* Intl.: +1-512-539-1143


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Zembower, Kevin
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 2:38 PM
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com
Subject: How to add disk back into RAID-5?

In my continuing saga of reviving an old PE 2450, I'm now at a new
roadblock. After flashing the PERC 3/Si BIOS and reviving the entire
system, I determined that disk 3 (0-3) died (blinking yellow light on
disk and chassis, disk not seen at all by PERC 3/Si configuration
utility). I replaced the disk with an (equally old) spare of the same
size from a mothballed system. This moved me along a little farther; the
disk was then seen by the PERC configuration utility. However, I can't
seem to get it added back into the RAID-5 container. I've erased the
data on the disk and formatted the disk, too. However, in the
configuration utility, the RAID-5 container shows:
  Container Size 205GB
  Container Status Critical
  Container Members
     0:00:0 Fujitsu ... 68.3GB
     0:01:0 Fujitsu ... 68.3GB
     0:02:0 Fujitsu ... 68.3GB
        Missing member

Do I have to erase the RAID-5 container (and all the data in it) and
reinitialize it with all four disks, or is there a way to add my new
drive into the array and have it rebuild from the data on the remaining
three disks? I thought that adding a new drive would automatically start
the rebuild, but flashing the PERC BIOS while it was degraded may have
messed things up.

Every time the PERC configuration utility asked about accepting a
changed configuration, I said 'yes,' so that I could try to fix it. Did
I cause the initial failure to incorporate the new fourth drive when I
said 'yes' the first time to this question? Can I fix this by removing
the drive, letting it boot, then replacing the drive?

Thanks, as always, for your help, suggestions and advice.

-Kevin

Kevin Zembower
Internet Services Group manager
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
111 Market Place, Suite 310
Baltimore, Maryland  21202
410-659-6139 


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