dealing with a failing drive

[Jerry McAllister]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 09:26:38AM -0800, David Newman wrote:

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> On 11/12/07 8:14 AM, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> 
> > An update: After doing what you suggest (leaving in the "good" disk,
> > adding a new disk, RAID rebuilding) I still got soft write errors --
> > with *either one* of the disks I tried.
> > 
> > Then I tried putting both disks in an identical server and they came up
> > fine, no read or write errors.
> > 
> > Ergo, the bad RAID controller is bad and the disks may be OK.
> > 
> >> Probably not.
> >> Generally, if the RAID controller is bad, you will see errors
> >> all over and not it just one place, tho I suppose it is possible.
> >> Check and see what it reports as error locations and see if they
> >> move around any.
> 
> Jerry, thanks for your response.
> 
> After 36 hours of running the same disks in a different, identical
> machine there hasn't been a single read or write error. I'm hardly a
> storage expert but from the evidence I have I'm inclined to believe the
> root cause was a bad RAID controller and not failed disks.

That is not much proof. 
The different machine would probably be accessing the disks in
a different way, either slightly different positioning or using
different space.   Also, 36 hours is not really much time.

It could be you are right, but disks have a way of starting small
in errors and then avalanching on you with accelerating volume
of errors just when you begin to feel safe.

You could be right, but is the price of a disk worth it - the
price of a new RAID controller, for that matter?   Replace them
both.

////jerry

> 
> I'm aware of CLI tools to monitor 3Ware SATA RAID controllers. Anyone
> know if there are similar tools for HP/Compaq SCSI RAID controllers?
> 
> thanks
> 
> dn
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