Adaptec 2400a and failed harddrives

Maartz

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Sep 5, 2002
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18,510
At the moment I have the following problem:

When I look in the bios of the Adaptec 2400a (By pressing Ctrl A at bootup)the first drive of my aray is missing:

(0,0) Missing Compl

And the status of the array is: "Degraded"

The systems boots normally into Windows 2000 and everything works fine.

My Question is: How do I get the drive back in the bios of the controller without loosing any data? (Does the Raid 5 still work at this moment?)

I have experienced simular problems before.

The first time the status of 1 of my drives was "failed". I replaced it with another 60 GB drive, deleted the raid 5 array end created a new one (unfortunately I lost all data in that proces). Then I tested the "failed" drive and it worked perfectly fine.

The second time I had one "failed" drive and one completely missing drive. The status of the array was death. When I deleted the array and created a new one (this time without replacing the failed and dissappearing harddrives), all the drives where the again and the status was "optimal" for all drives.

I don't think the drive is defect this time (Not any of the drives was with the former problems). But I would really like to know why the drives dissappear or get a "failed" status and how I can solve the problem. I have the latest bios version for the Adaptec 2400a (It was allready in there).

Strange thing is that Windows is still booting and working properly. The other 2 times Windows could not be booted anymore. Update! Windows doesn't boot properly anymore.



> Webmail Solution : 09/05/02 01:55:01 ho21893
>
> Greetings from Adaptec,
>
> I am responding to your issue with the ATA RAID 2400A.
>
> You have to shut down the system, replace the failed drive with a new one (same model & same size). Start up and press Ctrl A to go into the BIOS of the card. In there you > should found that the status of the RAID is degraded. Just highlight #0 2400A and expand it. Highlight the new drive and press Alt + A (action), choose Make Hot Spare. After the > system recognized the hot spare, it will automatically start the rebuild. The status will change to Rebuilding as well. Until 100%, then restart your machine and you should directly > boot to the OS.
>
> Hope this can help.
>
> Regards,
> Technical Support
> Adaptec

I don't think this is the solution, because the harddrives where perfectly ok last time (And I think the drive will be this time). Is the controller itself the problem?
 

Maartz

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Sep 5, 2002
2
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18,510
This is my system configuration:

2x AMD Athlon MP 1900+
2x ThermalTake Vulcano 7+
Asus A7M266-D
3x 512 MB Kingston PC2100 CL2 ecc registered
Adaptec 2400a => 4 x 60 GB IBM (60 GPX) 7200 u100 (Raid 5)
Promise Ultra 100 TX2 => 3x 60 GB IBM (60 GPX) 7200 u100
& 80 GB IBM (120 GPX) 7200
80 GB WD 7200 u100 8 MB Cache
Ati Radeon 8500 64 MB Retail (275 MHz core / 550 MHz memory)
3Com 3C980-TXM
SB Live! 1024
Asus USB 2.0 Controller
Pioneer DVD 10x 40
Plextor CD-Burner 8x 4x 32x
Asus Ipanel Deluxe
500 W Flowerpower powersupply (with 3 x 80 mm fan)
Chieftec Bigtower Black (with extra bracket for 4 x hdd)
5x 80 mm Papst Fan ; 1x 92 mm Papst Fan
3x hdd-cooler (With 3x 40 mm fan each)
17” Sony Trinitron
Logitech cordless desktop optical
Logitech Dual Optical Mouseman
Canon BJC 2000
Creatice Desktop Theatre 2500

Dual Boot: Windows 2000 Pro SP3 and Suse Linux 8.0