[TriLUG] OT: Failed Raid Controller

[Jason Tower]

most raid controllers give you the option of reading the array config 
off the disks that it sees, so if you swap out the controller for a 
known good unit there's a good possibility that you can recover the 
array(s) if the disks are still intact.

i might have a spare 3200 controller floating around here if you need 
one.

jason

On Tuesday 30 November 2004 10:06, Steve Hoffman wrote:
> Sorry for the Off Topic post, but I'm desperate for answers and
> either google doesn't have much or I don't know what to search for.
>
> I don't know if any of you use Hosted Solutions for your hosting
> needs, but my company does and last night something strange happened
> there, I don't know any details but the power went down (at least
> once) and when it came back up all our machines came online except
> one (the oldest one).  I did a little poking around and I believe
> that I have it narrowed down to an failed RAID Controller.
>
> The machine starts booting normally, but when it gets to our Compaq
> Smart Array 3200 it attempts to initialize for ever.  When I
> initially hit the power the lights built into this Proliant 6400R's
> onboard drives flash, so I can see they are getting power.
>
> My question is, can I recover this data from the drives?  I have
> another controller available (almost identical except it's a single
> channel controller).  I saw one post (the only relevant one I could
> find) that said I could rebuild the array configuration from the
> information stored on the disks.  I have no idea how to do this as
> I've never had a RAID card go bad on me before.  I do have the Compaq
> "Server Setup and Management" CD's V.5 which I see Array Diagnostic
> utilities, but before I hose the system completely does anyone have
> any experience with this and could offer a few condolences/pointers?
>
> I do have the system back up and running on a different system
> restored from tape backups so we're not down, but we would still like
> to get this one back online AND (if possible) recover whatever data
> we can.
>
> Thanks in Advance
>
> Steve
>
> The OS is/was RH9 so I'm not completely off topic, but I don't
> remember the exact drive configuration i.e. where / was and where
> /var was (I think it was 4 drives in two RAID-1 Configurations) if
> that helps anyone.