No boot device - RAID 5 Unconfiguration Bad

[bondbill2k2]

Well I was welcomed back to work this week with the curric DC displaying no boot device found. Having looked at a number of settings and logged a call as the equiptment is under warrenty I began looking at the Intel RAID controller BIOS having never looked configured or genrally touched RAID setup before. First thing was a prompt to select a configuration to import for the adaptor, to which I selected cancel and viewed the pysical device status. One drive out of the 5 currently running was showing as conf:Bad status. I have since selected make good and the device now shows on the avaliable important conguration as a hot swap drive. Would I be correct in saying if I import this config to the RAID controler the hot swap drive will be rebuilt? I'm yet to go ahead with this before asking someone knowing abit more then me on RAID but as its under warrenty any support goes to suppliers and we are awaiting a call back. Any help would be greatly appreciated! *hands out eduhobknobs willy and indeed nilly*

[tmcd0035]

How meny hard drives are there, how are they configured and are any hot swappable, are any set up as spares or are they all part of the RAID array?

 

If one drive as failed then you shouldn't get no boot device found, but the system should be running a bit slower as it is constantly using the error checking to reproduce the missing data.

 

If a drive was listed as bad it should be replaced and not made good. Remember if two drives fail then everything is lost.

 

In theory - If you put a new drive in then the RAID hardware should automatically rebuild the array using that drive.

[jamesfed]

Sounds to me like the controller is having a little un-fun fun with you.

 

I think it may end up as replacing the controller and a restore from backups.

 

Any power cuts or other abnormal behaviour over the weekend?

[Michael]

It doesn't quite make sense what's happening. RAID5 allows one failed drive, but it will/should still boot.

 

Generally speaking bringing the failed drive back online should re-build the array, but it still doesn't explain why the server cannot boot in the first place.

[bondbill2k2]

Yea Im a little thrown by it the fact I loaded up the Raid controller bios to be prompted for a foreign config import. If RAID had been configured correctly this shouldn't be prompting correct?

 

tmcd0035- 5 physical discs I may be wrong in saying RAID5, I've been told that is what it uses but I cannot find any settings stating this :/ No abnormal activity to my knowlage over the weekend either, other servers are still fine.

 

We keep on-site backup and off-site for most files. Our printserver also acts as replication AD plus its our primary DHCP server. Do I dare apply the foreign adaptor settings of 4xphysical drives and 1x hotswap....

Edited June 25, 2012 by bondbill2k2