Server down - RAID issue, PERC 4/SC

Hello Everyone,

I'm having troubles with a Dell Poweredge 800 and its PERC 4/SC Raid card running SBS2003. And 3 SCSI hard drives in a RAID 5. Things seem to have gone from bad to worse. Fortunally the client is good about backup, so I believe the worst case scenario would be reinstalling from scratch and relying on backups.The background is this: Was referred to client when server started beeping. Immediately I thought it must be a RAID issue. I booted into the RAID config tool and found 1 of the 3 drives had failed (drive 2.) Because this is not hot-swapable I shut down the server and removed the drive cage (had to disconnect all the drives to do so) to see brand/size/model number etc for the replacement.

Reconnected normally and rebooted. The system got as far as the SBS2003 splash screen just on the first boot attempt. The RAID beep code switched to a long beep and the system rebooted. Again I went into the RAID config tool and its now reports drive 0 has also failed, and the RAID has failed as well. What are the odds?? It is no longer even getting to the Windows splash screen.

So now I have ordered new drives and am waiting for arrival. I have not tried to rebuild the RAID. I wanted to at least replace the first drive to fail before attempting. Would anyone care to make any suggestions? It would be really nice not to have to reinstall from scratch.

The only documentation I found is:

http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~brecht/servers/docs/PowerEdge-2600/en/Perc4scdc/UG/h...

Also it is a bit confusing which is drive 2. According to the link, it sounds like the top one is, but in the raid software, it seems to indicate its the bottom one. Also, the Dell drive cage is labeled top to bottom 0-1-2-3 (there is no 3)

Thank you all,
Jim

 

FYI - I found that you identify the SCSI by the jumper settings. This specifies which device is which. I was not, however, able to resurrect the system so I had to replace the drives and reinstall. Thanks.