Help Us Help You: Is My New Drive Operational?
RSA Netwitness Support sent a disk to replace one that has failed. You have inserted the disk and run the nwraidutil.pl but the new drive shows a status of "(?)" rather than "(O)".
What does this mean?
Is my new drive working?
Do I need to do anything?
Verifying A Disk Drive
It is always best to check the status of a disk after replacing one. The nwraidutil.pl script is designed to show the status of all disk drives in an appliance and attached storage.
If the drive in enclosure 29, slot 11 had just been replaced, the output of the command would look something like this:
| nwraidutil.pl Sample Output. |
|---|
Adapter 1 (PERC H830 Adapter) enclosures found: 1
Adapter 1 (PERC H830 Adapter) enclosure 29 slots found: 15
Encl Slot State P.Fail.Count Raw Size Drive FW Inquiry Data
29 10 (O) 0 3.638 TB GS1F SEAGATE ST4000NXCLAR4000GS1FZ1Z95Q57
29 11 (?) 0 3.638 TB GS1F SEAGATE ST4000NXCLAR4000GS1FZ1Z95SVJ
29 12 (O) 0 3.638 TB GS1F SEAGATE ST4000NXCLAR4000GS1FZ1ZA1MR4
29 13 (O) 0 3.638 TB GS1F SEAGATE ST4000NXCLAR4000GS1FZ1ZA166R
29 14 (O) 0 3.638 TB GS1F SEAGATE ST4000NXCLAR4000GS1FZ1ZA167T |
The status of "(?)" means the drive is an "unknown" state. In this case, it is actually rebuilding. That means the hot spare is copying back information from itself to the newly inserted drive.
Normally, in a Series 5 Hybrid the hot spare is in disk slot 11 and in DACs the hot spare is in slot 14.
If you see that the normal hot spare is not identified as a hot spare, that means it is currently "replacing" some other disk. Once the hot spare rebuilds the newly inserted disk, the status will revert to a hot spare.
How Can I Make Sure The Drive is "Rebuilding?"
Use the following command to verify that a newly inserted drive is rebuilding.
| Show Rebuild Progress |
|---|
| # /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 pdcpybk showprog PhysDrv[29:11] -a1 Copyback Progress on Device at Enclosure 29, Slot 11 Completed 52% in 276 Minutes. Exit Code: 0x00 |
A 6TB drive can take nearly 10 hours to rebuild. A 4TB drive will take 6 to 8 hours to rebuild. Busier systems will rebuild slower than quieter systems.
If you have any questions please contact Support and reference this article number.
