RAID controller drive drop out weirdness

[samba_man]

We have an RM Server fitted with an LSI MegaRAID SAS 830ELP controller. There are 4 drives, 3 configured as a RAID5 and one global hotswap.

 

Last week the controller started beeping, we looked at the logs and the drive in slot 0 come up as: Foreign (Unconfigured) Good. While we investigated I swapped the drive with an identical spare. We tested the drive which dropped out using chkdsk and it came back fine so we configured it as a global hot spare in slot 3.

 

This week the new replacement drive in slot 0 has come up as: Foreign (Unconfigured) Good and the hot spare has jumped in to action.

 

I've taken the side off the server to see if there are any cables to slot 0 but it's all plugged directly in to a daughter board in the front and a single chunky cable going to a PCI type slot at the back.

 

I don't really want to think it, but if it happens one more time in my mind I'm going to have to buy a new RAID controller and rebuild the server.

 

Before it happens though, has anyone got any suggestions or other things to check?

Also, will I have to rebuild the server from backups or is there a non destructive method?

[twin--turbo]

Any firmware updates available for the LSI?

 

You also need to see if there are any S.M.A.R.T predicted errors as they may be causing problems.

 

I would be looking at getting a new host and P2Ving the server

 

Rob

[samba_man]

Cheers Rob.

 

I'll make a note of the firmware version when I'm over there next week and see what the LSI website reckons.

 

As much as I'd like to buy a couple of new servers and P2V them, my main project at the moment is trying to find the money to get on to W7.

[CHR1S]

SATA desktop drives?

 

Enterprise and Near Enterprise drives support Time-Limited Error Recovery ("TLER") Desktop drives do not.

As a non-TLER HDD fills up with data, the error detection firmware might take too long, and the RAID controller may drop that HDD from a RAID array.