Dell PERC 4/SI - Manual (Page 65)

Hard Disk Drive Related Issues
Table 6 -2 describes hard drive related problems you might encounter, along with suggested solutions.
Table 6-2. Hard Disk Drive Issues
Drive Failures and Rebuilds
Table 6 -3 describes issues related to drive failures and rebuilds.
Table 6-3. Drive Failure and Rebuild Issues
The BIOS Configuration Utility does not detect a replaced physical drive in a
RAID 1 array and offer the option to start a rebuild.
After the drive is replaced, the utility shows all drives online and all logical
drives reporting optimal state. It does not allow rebuilding because no failed
drives are found.
This occurs if you replace the drive with a drive that contains data. If the
new drive is blank, this problem does not occur.
Perform the following steps to solve this problem:
l Access the BIOS Configuration Utility and select Objects—> Physical
Drive to display the list of physical drives.
l Use the arrow key to select the newly inserted drive, then press
.
The menu for that drive displays.
l Select Force Offline and press .
This changes the physical drive from Online to Failed.
l Select Rebuild and press .
After rebuilding is complete, the problem is resolved and the
operating system will boot.
The system takes a long time to boot during a RAID Level Migration or Check
Consistency operation.
This is normal behavior during a RAID level migration or consistency check.
Problem Suggested Solution
The system does not
boot from the RAID
controller.
If the system does not boot from the controller, check the boot order in the BIOS.
One of the hard drives in
the array fails often.
This could result from one or two problems.
l If the same drive fails:
¡ Format the drive.
¡ Check the enclosure or backplane for damage.
¡ Check the SCSI cables.
¡ Replace the hard drive.
l Drives in the same slot keep failing:
¡ Check the enclosure or backplane for damage.
¡ Check the SCSI cables.
¡ Replace the cable or backplane.
Critical Array Status Error
is reported during boot-
up.
One or more of your logical drives is degraded. To recover from a degraded logical drive, rebuild the failed drive in each array.
Upon successful completion of the rebuild process, the logical drive state changes from degraded to optimal. See Logical Drive
Degraded in this section for more information. See Rebuilding Failed Hard Drives in RAID Configuration and Management for
information about rebuilding failed drives.
FDISK reports much
lower drive capacity in
the logical drive.
Some versions of FDISK (such as DOS 6.2) do not support large disk drives. Use a version that supports large disk sizes or use a
disk utility in your operating system to partition your disk.
Cannot rebuild a fault
tolerant array.
This could result from any of the following:
l The replacement disk is too small or bad. Replace the failed disk with a good drive.
l The enclosure or backplane could be damaged. Check the enclosure. or backplane.
l The SCSI cables could be bad. Check the SCSI cables.
Fatal errors or data
corruption are reported
when accessing arrays.
Contact Dell Technical Support.
Issue Suggested Solution