iDRAC - PowerEdge T710

[Hans Manhave]

I (finally) noticed that I have a red/orange message on the LCD display on the unit:

Storage Drive 4.  Drive Slot sensor for Storage, drive fault was asserted

Having an old Windows XP with its Internet Explorer enabled me to still log into the iDRAC device.

T710 is working fine being a server, just don't know how to verify if the RAID has the 4th (or is it 5th physical, if it starts at 0??) is really bad or just had a hickup?

Supposedly this happened on 4/11/24, but I don't believe there was a red display at that time plus, I don't know what the actual time reference is (today, 30 days late etc).

Any thoughts on verification will be helpful and appreciated.  I know the machine can assert a lot of things that just go away such as power supply sensor failure (I have spares) but they don't even last a second every other month or so.

Thanks for your time.

HM

[Joshua Conner]

My drives have lights you can tell from that.  Also you should log into the idrac and go to raid it should give more explanation of what is going on.  You can also make the drive blink and see how they are numbered. idrac should tell you everything you need to know.

[Hans Manhave]

This is an iDRAC 6 Express v.1.54. 

It lists Batteries, Fans, Intrusion, Power Supplies, Temperatures, Voltages.  All those pass. 

I opened the front lid of the unit and it appears that one drive is permanently on the blink (literally blinking!).  It appears to be drive #5 out of five.

Guess I best find out what drive model it is and see about acquiring a good one promptly.

I believe these things are hot swappable. 

[Hans Manhave]

Problem corrected.  Two RAID5 drives replaced.  One dead, one about to be dead.  Have another spare ready when needed.  RAID1 is fine, but also now have a spare for it.

[Tom Fisher]

You dodged a bullet there on the RAID 5.  2 drives lost on most RAID5 arrays = complete failure!  Depending on the setup and if you have the physical space, you can often times have the spare in the server and on standby and then when failure occurs the RAID will disable the bad drive and bring the spare online.