First, let me say the PERC S300 isn't a good RAID controller. It gives you the capacity for RAID 0, 1, and 5, but the processing is done by the operating system so they're not true hardware RAID controllers. They also don't provide write back support which can a big performance impact depending on your application.
If one of the drives fails on a PERC S300 RAID controller and you replace it with a new drive (the S300 supports hot swap) the controller may not automatically start rebuilding the array onto the new drive. Open your Server Administrator console and first check to make sure the new drive shows up under the "Physical Disks" listing. If it does then check the "Virtual Disks" listing and see if you suddenly have a new virtual disk the same capacity as the replacement drive. If you do, go ahead and verify it only contains the replacement drive, and then go ahead and delete it. Once it's deleted go back to "Physical Disks" and set the replacement drive to "Global Hot Spare". Once applied the controller should start rebuilding the affected arrays onto the new drive. Go back to "Virtual Disks" to check the progress.
Oh how true you are. Just had the same problem. PERC see's the new disk and rather than assigning it to the array, it creates a new Non-Raid Virtual disk.
ReplyDeleteLuckily DELL sent me a 250GB replacement for a 160GB drive so pretty easy to see which one was which.
Thanks for the info though much appreciated
Thanks for this information. I was wondering what was going on and you've certainly assisted me in resolving this issue.
ReplyDeleteI have a question - after the global hot spare got rebuilt, the RAID is no longer showing degraded but I still have a virtual drive labeled failed. Could I delete the failed virtual drive now that the hot spare has been rebuilt?
ReplyDelete