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#278647 - 31/03/2006 16:32 Promise RAID Controller forgot hard drive
mcomb
pooh-bah

Registered: 31/08/1999
Posts: 1649
Loc: San Carlos, CA
Hi, I've got a promise tx2000 with two drives in a stripped configuration. This morning the server (running FreeBSD) crashed and now the promise bios is showing the RAID as broken. It shows one of the two drives as attached to the RAID and the other as "Free".

Since both drives are at least showing up I figure it should be possible too reattach the free drive to restore the array. Unfortunately I can't find anyway to do this through the Promise software. Has anyone dealt with this before?

I've got a backup of the most critical data on the array, but if possible I'd rather not lose the remaining data. Any suggestions on how to proceed would be appreciated.

-Mike
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#278648 - 31/03/2006 16:41 Re: Promise RAID Controller forgot hard drive [Re: mcomb]
mcomb
pooh-bah

Registered: 31/08/1999
Posts: 1649
Loc: San Carlos, CA
To respond to my own post I just found from their FAQ:

Quote:
If all of the members of the array are still functioning, it may be possible to recover your data. In the FastBuild BIOS utility, delete the array and re-create it [ IMPORTANT: Make sure that when you recreate the array you use exactly the same array settings (RAID level, drive assignments, and stripe size) of the original array ]. Going offline may indicate trouble with a hard drive, so it is recommended to perform a data backup and then perform a disk diagnostic on the hard drives.


So I guess I'll try that. I suppose it would be a good idea to do a block level copy of the drives first incase it decides to reformat the array in the process.

-Mike
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#278649 - 02/04/2006 05:45 Re: Promise RAID Controller forgot hard drive [Re: mcomb]
tahir
pooh-bah

Registered: 27/02/2004
Posts: 1900
Loc: London
What happened in the end Mike?

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#278650 - 03/04/2006 17:45 Re: Promise RAID Controller forgot hard drive [Re: tahir]
mcomb
pooh-bah

Registered: 31/08/1999
Posts: 1649
Loc: San Carlos, CA
Quote:
What happened in the end Mike?


After about 6 hours of trying every RAID config possible and installing FreeBSD onto a spare drive so I could at least boot the system and get access to the raw drives I got it working again. The root partition seems to be trashed beyond repair, but the usr partition which is the one I cared about has been recovered.

The trick was not only recreating the RAID as described in their FAQ, but also having the drives attached to the same controller channels as they where when the RAID was created. A year or two ago I moved the RAID into a new box and the drives where apparently not connected to the same channels as when I originally created the array. For the stripes to match up I had to get them back to the original config. A hint about that in their FAQ would have saved me a few hours

-Mike
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EmpMenuX - ext3 filesystem - Empeg iTunes integration

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