I have been handed an old Dell and RAID box that needs to be resurrected, however I can't figure out the magical combination of switches and cables needed to get the thing to go properly.
I have:
- a Dell Poweredge 2850
- a PERC 42/DI onboard
- a PERC 4/DC expansion card
- a PowerVault 220S with two Ultra-320 SCSI controllers
- 14 disks
- two SCSI cables.
I don't know if the PowerVault is supposed to be in split-bus mode or not. The locals were playing with it (with everything, actually) before I got here.
The most promising configuration so far has been:
- put the PowerVault into split-bus mode
- connect the 4/DC channel-0 to the controller on the left - the one behind disks 0 - 8
- connect the 4/DC channel-1 to the controller on the right
When I did this, each of the disks identified themselves as being a member of a 13-disk RAID-5 array. I then imported the configuration into the controller. However on reboot it is telling me that SCSI IDs 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8 are not responding (ID 1 is flashing as bad so I presume that's a failed disk).
Is there something obvious I am doing wrong? Is there a way to read the disk configuration so that I can understand what the controller is expecting?
Are you actually trying to resurrect the RAID array, or start over fresh? Was this known to be working properly before you got it? Where did it come from?
If you don't know anything about it, and nor does anyone else (got it as surplus or from eBay?), then it is quite possible for there to be hidden lurking damage from the previous owner, such as a lightning strike or a hard fall off the back of a truck that broke one or more components.
The cleanest approach would be to simply try to format everything and start over fresh.
If you can determine at least one good drive in the collection that formats and reports no errors in its drive information, then you can then test progressively moving it from one slot to the next to see if you can still detect and read its drive information. If at any point you can't read these good drives, then you've found a bad/damaged slot connector or damaged controller.
Though there is some risk of peril here. If there is a problem with one or more slots, that problem can potentially damage good drives when they're plugged into bad slots (such as a damaged/deformed slot connector).
Once you know which drives and slots are bad, then you can move forward to create a new array from what remains, or seek out better undamaged replacement components.
I believe split-bus mode will increase data throughput, since the RAID controller can use both channels simultaneously to access any two drives across the two channels in parallel.