Kermit

All,

Anyone know anything about Dell Servers ?

A friends server started beeping. He phoned Dell Support who suggested he turned the alarm off, updated his drivers and firmware, then turn the alarm on and run diags - So I believe.

The problem he now has is that the server is reporting no logical drives ?????

In the controller BIOS (Perc4/SC) it shows under config/view-add config the three drives as Ready.

Does that imply everything is lost, or is there a way of importing the config off the disks onto the controller ? (assuming the controller has lost its data).

Any help is gratefully appreciated>

K.

tronlc

What server?

Does it have a RAID card? what are the physical disks set to? ie raid 5? and raid 0?

Kermit

Hi there,

I believe it's a 1600 or 1800 Server

Its fitted with a PERC 4/SC controller

There are three disks fitted, I believe its a RAID5

I'm more an IBM type person than a Dell guy, so I'm struggling

K.

tronlc

Sounds like the controller has lost the raid config (assuming he set it up as H/W RAID??)

He could try and rebuild the array if done with the H/W, if done throught the OS then a bit more of a prob.. I do hope he run a backup soloution...

Kermit

Do you know the steps to import the config into the controller or scan the disks for config?

He can see the 3 disks, all reporting "ready", does that mean the controller sees them as virgin disks (ie they dont think they are a member of an array)?

Does the "ready" change to "ONL A" to signify they are online and part of an array A (like they do with IBM) ?

K.

tronlc

Its been a while since I have used Dell's servers (very few companies have them as you know!).

From what you say it sounds like they have lost the config (there will be an option at boot to go into the controller setup). Id have a look in that setup and see what it says there, you should be able to scan the logical drives, im not familiar with that particular card so cant be more specific (I am guessing you have already trawled google and dell's site)

All the best

Kermit

Cheers for trying to help.

Anyone else ?

K.

Kermit

Cheers for trying to help.

Anyone else ?

K.

HHxx

Here is a dangerous stab in the dark suggestion

Does swapping the disks when powered off to different slots force it to read the config from the disk on power up?

Or maybe remove disks, power up, enter perc bios, save changes, power off, reinsert disks and power up again?

**Note, haven't touched Dell's for over 3 years now and have no idea what that will do!

ps. buy a IBM or a HP