So awhile back (probably around 3 months ago), my first RAID5 file server (4x160GB) had a hiccup, where it wouldn’t detect 1 of the 4 drives and the Promise RAID controller would enter this “critical state”. I powered off the computer and checked to make sure all the cables were fine and made sure they were snug and tight. I rebooted, it started working again. Of course it needed to rebuild the drive (which takes ~2 hours) and after the rebuild was successful, I thought nothing much about it.<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, I noticed it was once again in critical state. To clarify, I hardly log onto this machine as it only serves as a file server, so I have no idea how long it’s been in critical state, but I can only assume it’s been for quite some time. I rebooted the machine several times and it finally detected the drive and started to rebuild. This time, after rebuilding, using Promise’s PAM (Promise Array Management) software, I told it to synchronize to make sure everything was working fine. When I came back to check on it, I noticed it kicked that drive off the array again.<\/p>\n
I decided to move all the data onto my second file server (yes, I know that I promised to blog about that and yes, it’s still coming. ETA: undetermined) as a prevention measure. The 2nd file server is a 2.5TB and had over 50% free so it can easily accommodated a 480GB file server, which was nowhere near full.<\/p>\n
I finally got around to testing that file server. First I tried changing SATA cables, but it pretty much failed immediately after rebuilding. I wanted to avoid running diagnostics on the drive since this was a hardware raid controller, the individual drives weren’t expose to the controller, which meant it required me to take the drive out and plug it into a different machine (since this motherboard doesn’t have on-board SATA ports). I finally caved and took the drive out and plugged it into my main box.<\/p>\n
I installed Seagate’s SeaTools for Windows and pretty much 5 seconds into the short test, results show FAILED<\/strong>. Sigh… Looks like I’m going to need to RMA the drive. Interestingly enough, I was still able to format the drive. This is my first RMA in years. The last one was probably back in college?<\/p>\n I’m not saying Seagates are bad. In fact, 90% of the hard drives in my computers are Seagates and the other 3 drives on my Promise RAID controller are the exact same drive, so I’m guessing this was just a bad one in the batch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So awhile back (probably around 3 months ago), my first RAID5 file server (4x160GB) had a hiccup, where it wouldn’t detect 1 of the 4 drives and the Promise RAID controller would enter this “critical state”. I powered off the computer and checked to make sure all the cables were fine and made sure they … <\/p>\n