Logical drives disabled due to possible data loss

[jay007]

I have a Proliant ML350 G5 with raid 5. Server has random reboots. I suspect its a power supply problem but started running HP insight diag to double check. It told me i had a problem with the controller for physical disk 1 but hard drive 3 had the blue light. To double check i asked one of the guys to right down serial number of hard drives. He pulled disk one and three out when server was on the Offline Insight CD ( My own fault I should have explained about pulling out disks in a raid). I was out of the shop and wont be back till the morning but he told me he is getting Logical drives disabled due to possible data loss.

Select "F1" to continue with logical drive(s) disabled
Select "F2" to accept data loss and to re-enable logical drive(s)
RESUME = "F1" OR "F2" KEY

I told him to to leave it till i am there.

If he has put back the drives in the wrong bays will it be just a matter of putting them back.

What other options do i have? I dont think customer was doing regular backups. Its running terminal server and a lot of sharing permissions due to two companys using one server. I have no problem rebuilding the server but I want to get accounts data off first. Anyone know of good recovery software for Raid 5?

 

[OfficeTechs]

my gut feeling is that you will be fine as long as they are back in the right bays and hit F2. The controller understandably thinks that there is or was uncommitted data probably in the cache waiting to be written to disk when the drives were pulled and thats why you are getting the prompt.

Someone else will be along shortly to advise on data recovery or imaging

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

2 out of 3 drives gone on a RAID 5, yeah it's disabled.
Ensure drives are back in their proper bays...and F2 to put it back together.
Compaq/HP Smart Array controllers are very resilient...there's a RIS file on each drive which identifies it and its relationship in the RAID volume, the controller sees that file and knows what to do with it. You can put those 3 drives in a new server with a different Smart Array controller and it will know what to do with them.

When building a server, label drives accordingly to the bay they're in..so if someone takes out several drives at the same time (after you slap the crap out of them for doing such a thing)...you know which bay to slide them back in.

 

[jay007]

So Pressing F2 wont actually erase any data as long as drives are in the right bay?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It's a very misleading and scary error...I still get chills when I see it and am about to press F2.

You booted from the HP CD before...and took drives out. The discarding data error refers to data that have changed on the drives and the controller would normally factor into the entire RAID array. There shouldn't have been much for important changes in data if you just booted from an HP CD. Or even if you booted to the OS..who cares...if nobody was doing work and saving documents and database files at the time.

Server still under warranty? Call HP server support to double check and get a better warm 'n fuzzy before hitting the key.

 

[jay007]

Yes it was only the Hp cd. Not under warranty. Thanks for the help I will let you know the outcome tomorrow when I get to the shop.

 

[jay007]

Thanks lads Server is back up and running. That F2 message really is misleading.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Time to pour some pints!