hard disks keep dropping offline Please HELP

[philmknight]

Today (16/04/04) i got into work to find my NT4 Server had crashed! only to find that on the reboot that 2 disk where offline.
in the past i have managed to get the system working again but putting 1 disk back online and rebooting but this time the system just freaked at me and said that all sorts of system files where missing.
so this time i brought the other disk back online aswell, this time NT booted but now im getting errors saying files are corrupted.

Now i have only been working here for 3 weeks and this is the first time this has happened, but from what i have heard this used to happen alot and i have also heard that 3 disk have gone offline at once!!!!

now can anyone suggest what i should as i cant afford for this to keep happening

Many Thanks
Phil Muchamore-Knight

 

[technome]

Check your firmware is up to date on the raid adapter. eg Dell had a few miserible firmware revisions in a row, causing the same problem as you have. On a few Dells I had two disks go offline multiple times, luckily without damage.
LSIlogic produces most of Dell's adapters, so I used Lsi's firmware to update the card, no problems since. Lsilogic makes Dell's raid cards, and about 80% of the cards out there.

rare but..
Different firmware revisions on disks can also creat havoc.
eg Seagate had a buggy revision on their 10k and 15k u320 drives last year.

For the hell of it I would reseat the raid card and every scsi cable connection.

Understand how it is only being with a place for 3 weeks, inheriting nasty problems.