PowerEdge 2500: Adding two hard drives

[Gnana]

Can some one please tell me the process or where I can find the information.

I have a PowerEdge 2500 with two hard drives (9GB each) setup with RAID 1 mirror. I want to add two more new ones (36GB each. The PowerEdge has RAID controller.

I am running Netware 6.

 

[MTVW]

since you are looking to install 2 new drives to go along with the 2 that you have in there you will have to create 2 separate containers. This is because your new drives are 36GB each and the old ones are 9GB. If they were all the same you could just reconfigure your Virtual disk and create a RAID5 Set. I'm not familiar with Netware6 so thats pretty much all the advice I can give you..

 

[Gnana]

Thank you for your reply. I eventually figured it out and created a separate container with RAID 1 and initialized these two drives and I was able to see them inside Netware. I even assigned a portion of it to a volume. The next day, a signal light flashed indicating problem with those two hard drives. When I rebooted the server, it indicated that one of the new drives was not seen by the container.

I did a foolish thing of deleting the new container and recreating it. In the process, it deleted the contents of the new drives (I don’t think I had anything at this time) – but importantly, it deleted also the entire volume I connected it to - the day before. Fortunately, I had a good backup and I was able to restore it.

Even after creating the new container, etc. now, the light is still flashing. If I pull one of the hard drives and put it back, I get a few messages and at the end, the message, ID (0:03:0) Drive spinup failed.

 

[MTVW]

Sounds like you could have a bad drive.....

First though I would perform or make sure that everything is up to date on the server...bios etc. Here is a link to the Dell Forum where you can get the updates is needed.

http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board?board.id=pes_hardrive

You could also switch the drives around...
If it is a bad drive just get another one. (you already knew that!)

 

[Gnana]

Thank you. I contacted Dell and they told me to download and run a hard disk diagnostic tool. A small program running on DOS. It showed that one of the hard drives was bad.

Dell had sent me a replacement the next day.

Everything seems to be fine now.

As per your advice, I have upgraded the server bios, etc.