HP Netserver LC2000 Failed drive

Hi all

I have aquired an elderly Netserver LC2000 and I am trying to get it back
into working order.

It has 6 SCSI drives which I assume is configured in RAID 5... 1 of the
drives appears to have failed and when BOOT displays failed logical drive
press Ctrl M to enter Netraid or any other key to continue.

If I continue I am able to BOOT WindowsNT Server but after a short time I
start to get Virtual Memory problems and everything goes pear shaped and
system crashes.

I have a replacement SCSI drive larger than the failed drive but I am unsure
about how to proceed to get the system up and running again (I have no
documentation for the sever an little experience with either SCSI or RAID).

There is a windows program installed which is supposed to automatically
rebuild the array on a new disk but I am afraid the virtual memory problems
will cause this to fail.

Can any of you learned persons give me a step by step outline of how I can
initalise and rebuild the RAID array manually on the replacement disk
through the Ctrl M option when the server BOOTS.

Many thanks in advance

Stan

Stan;

If you know which drive has failed, replace it with the new drive. Check
the SCSI ID. Size of the drives used to matter; I'm not sure if your server
will object, but for sure it will not rebuild past the size of the drives
that are in there. i.e. (5) 4.3 GB drives will probably co-exist with a
replacement 9 GB drive, but the 9 GB drive will only show 4.3 GB capacity.
Then boot the computer. If the RAID set is set correctly the drive should
rebuild itself - it will take time - and you should be up.

Another idea is to find a copy of Windows 2000 or 2003 server and download
all the utilities from HP's web site including the RAID setup utility and
start from scratch. Without SCSI experience you are at a loss, but with a
little poking around on your server you will see how the drives show up and
be able to check them out from the SCSI BIOS utility. Maybe even a Linux
distro is supported; check the HP site.

doug

"Stan" <> wrote in message news:...
> Hi all
>
> I have aquired an elderly Netserver LC2000 and I am trying to get it back
> into working order.
>
> It has 6 SCSI drives which I assume is configured in RAID 5... 1 of the
> drives appears to have failed and when BOOT displays failed logical drive
> press Ctrl M to enter Netraid or any other key to continue.
>
> If I continue I am able to BOOT WindowsNT Server but after a short time I
> start to get Virtual Memory problems and everything goes pear shaped and
> system crashes.
>
> I have a replacement SCSI drive larger than the failed drive but I am
> unsure about how to proceed to get the system up and running again (I have
> no documentation for the sever an little experience with either SCSI or
> RAID).
>
> There is a windows program installed which is supposed to automatically
> rebuild the array on a new disk but I am afraid the virtual memory
> problems will cause this to fail.
>
> Can any of you learned persons give me a step by step outline of how I can
> initalise and rebuild the RAID array manually on the replacement disk
> through the Ctrl M option when the server BOOTS.
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Stan
>

Thanks for that Doug

Replaced the drive and reboot the server but no automatic rebuild and
problems continue.

I finally worked out the problem. From the HP netraid program (before a
crash caused by lack of virtual memory) I realised that there was in fact 2
Raid arrays. 4x18.2Gb configured in RAID 5 and 2x18.2Gb configured in RAID
0 one of which was the failed drive. The virtual memory was obviously (now)
configured on the RAID 0 array. I reformated the working RAID 0 drive as a
standalone drive and allocated virtual memory on this drive.

Reboot and everything running sweet.

One other question though... What is the best use of the replacement drive I
bought?

I assume there was a performance issue which was the reason for the RAID 0
in the first place.
Maybe I should reconfigure as original RAID 0 but it seems an awful waste of
2x18Gb drives just for virtual memory?
Maybe just leave it as a hot spare in case any of the RAID 5 drives fail?
Maybe is it possible and worthwhile to add a drive to the RAID 5 array?

"Doug Holtz" <> wrote in message
news:471ddef6$0$28835$...
> Stan;
>
> If you know which drive has failed, replace it with the new drive. Check
> the SCSI ID. Size of the drives used to matter; I'm not sure if your
> server will object, but for sure it will not rebuild past the size of the
> drives that are in there. i.e. (5) 4.3 GB drives will probably co-exist
> with a replacement 9 GB drive, but the 9 GB drive will only show 4.3 GB
> capacity. Then boot the computer. If the RAID set is set correctly the
> drive should rebuild itself - it will take time - and you should be up.
>
> Another idea is to find a copy of Windows 2000 or 2003 server and download
> all the utilities from HP's web site including the RAID setup utility and
> start from scratch. Without SCSI experience you are at a loss, but with a
> little poking around on your server you will see how the drives show up
> and be able to check them out from the SCSI BIOS utility. Maybe even a
> Linux distro is supported; check the HP site.
>
> doug