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Raid 5 Health Status

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by bernard.nelson

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We are currently running Raid5 with 3 hard drives. How can you check the status of the drives to make sure that one of them is not failing. In Disk Manager, it shows that the drive is Healthy. Does this mean that all three of the drives are OK? Currently our storage only has 2% free on the "D" drive. The server will just shut down on it's own. I am not sure if we have a bad hard drive or the storage is shutting the server down. Is it possible to add another drive of the same size and type to the array to add additional storage space?

3 replies

by razz2

I would need more info. Is this a name brand server or custom
built? Hardware RAID or software? Am I assuming that the RAID
is the D drive? If it says Healthy then it most likely is Healthy.
The shutdown is not the D drive. it sounds more like a thermal
issue. Are all the fans running? Check the power supply fan,
processor fan etc and clean them. Is there a UPS? I have often
seen old ups's cause that.

To add a drive depends on the type of RAID. With a RAID
controller you can add a drive and tell it to use it. If it is software
then backup the data, re-create the RAID and restore the data.

The other option is creating a mount point on D and pointing it
at the new drive. That would not have that drive in the RAID
though and it would not solve the storage space issue.

razz

by rindi1

It depends on your raid system. What raid controller are you using? You usually get software along with your raid controller with which you can diagnose problems on your raid, but that software is different depending on the manufacturer and model of the controller. You may want to search the manufacturers homepage for the drivers and software for your system.

by bobho

I don't think the free space is the problem of the shutdown but if it is it should be writing out an event in the event log.

The ability to add an additional drive to the array is dependent on the controller. Check your documentation. The array capacity will be the size of the smallest drive (if the drives are not the same size) times one less than the number of drives. If your controller will allow you add another drive you can use this formula to calculate your new capacity.

As for diagnosing your raid controller or software raid package should have utilities to check the individual drives in your array. Check your particular package for the tools available.

Cheers.

RW

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