OT:Need help with old Raid array

[Boaz Bezborodko]

Tom Carey wrote:
> I make my customers replace hard drives after 5 year of service to minimise
> drive failures. It's easier to clone a drive than it is to recover data
> under stressful circumstances and a lot cheaper for the customer.
>
> If you suspect incepient drive problems run SPINRITE on the drive. It does a
> great job of recovering data on sectors that are going bad.
>
> If the drive is in a array I suspect that you will have to remove it and put
> it as a secondary drive in a PC so SPINRITE can deal with it.
>
> You didn't say if this was a SCSI array or and IDE array.
>
> To use SPINRITE on a SCSI drive yu will have to find DOS compatable drivers
> for the controller board
>
> Spinrite boots into FREEDOS and doesn't really care what format the data is
> in. All it sees is bit patterns.
>
> I assume that you have a tape or some other form of complete backup to work
> with.
>
> Good luck
>
> Tom Carey
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Boaz Bezborodko" <boaz at mirrotek.com>
> To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 1:02 PM
> Subject: OT:Need help with old Raid array
>
>
>   
>> I came in this morning to find that the Netware server detected a
>> corruption in the data volume and deactivated it.  It took two rebuilds
>> to get the data back and only some inconsequential files were lost.  It
>> seems that there was an I/O error last night that caused the problem.
>>
>> My questions is whether this is a problem I have to worry about (i.e.
>> imminent hardware failure) or just a glitch.
>>
>> The hardware is a Compaq Storage Array connected via a Compaq Smart
>> Array 3200.  The array is set up as a RAID 5.  I have had no problem
>> until now.  But during the rebuild there were times when the drives on
>> the array would stop and gave me the feeling of a failing drive trying
>> to get data off a bad sector.  None of the drives failed and it seems to
>> be working OK, right now.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>>
>> Boaz
>>     
I'll look at replacing the hard-drives (swapping one at a time and let
the controller rebuild the array) just to be sure.  But could there be a
problem with one drive that the SCSI array cannot detect?

BTW, I had posted a message on the Netware newsgroup.  One of the
Netware guys responded, unofficially, that he felt the problem was less
likely to be in the hardware and more likely to be in the OS portion
dealing with the volume.  But since I am using an obsolete version of
the OS there will not be any patches coming along that would fix it.

His only suggestion was to possibly upgrade firmware and drivers if
available.