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Dell Servers – Disk Status Codes

RAID HDD Status Codes on Dell Servers

Should a hard drive or volume fail on a Dell RAID, it’s always good practice to fix the problem as soon as possible. The longer a problem is allowed to persist without being repaired, the higher the chance of a serious problem developing on the server. Serious problems usually spell a degree of data loss, and data loss needs to be avoided at all costs.

Dell’s Array Manager application makes troubleshooting disk and volume problems straightforward: Simply run the application, go to the List View mode and find the status column: this displays the status of each disk and volume present on the array. The status for all disks should read ONLINE and the status for all volumes should read HEALTHY. Any other status means there is a problem that requires immediate attention.

Disk Status Information

The table below explains the Status entries and their meanings

  • UNKNOWN – If you’ve added a new disk to the array that has previously been part of another RAID array (with a different RAID controller) you will see this status.
  • READY – This indicates the hard drive is operational and is included in the array. Hard drives with the READY status are NOT part of any virtual disk, except on PERC 2, 2/si, 3/si and 3/di systems where the READY status is displayed regardless of the drive being part of a virtual disk or not.
  • FAILED – Tells the disk is not working. A FAILED hard drive needs to be removed from the RAID set and replaced with a working drive.
  • ONLINE – The disk is operational, part of the RAID set and working correctly
  • DEGRADED – The degraded status refers to the state of the array rather than the individual disks and it means that the array contains a failed disk. Swap the failed disk out with a good one and the degraded status will disappear once the new disk has been included in the RAID set.
  • RECOVERING – Describes a hard drive with bad blocks from which the system is attempting to recover from. It’s a good idea to swap drives that have been identified as having bad blocks out of the RAID set and replace them with new drives.
  • REMOVED – A disk with this status has been removed and is no longer part of the array
  • RESYNCHING – This status will be seen during various disk and server housekeeping functions such as reconfiguring and disk checking.
  • REBUILDING – Displayed whenever the RAID goes into a rebuild e.g. after a disk in the RAID set has been replaced etc.
  • NO MEDIA – When removable media such as a CD-ROM has no media
  • FORMATTING – Displayed during a hard drive format operation
  • DIAGNOSTICS – Self explanatory – Diagnostics processes are currently running on these drives.
  • RECONSTRUCTING – This status appears when the configuration of a virtual disk is changed. Once a change occurs, the individual disks within the virtual disk array have to be modified to reflect the changes. Virtual reconstruction can not be cancelled once started.
  • INITIALISING – If a virtual disk is to be used by the Dell Array Manager it’s configuration details are first deleted, losing all data from the virtual disk.

Need Help and Advice ?

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