How to "Unlock" a drive from 3Ware 9500S array?

S

Steve Cousins

I apologize for multiposting this. I sent this to comp.arch.storage
last night. I should have sent it to c.s.i.p.h.s instead I think.

A SATA drive (Western Digital 2500SD) from a 3Ware 9500S array went
offline and was replaced by a hot-spare. I pulled the "bad" drive and
put it in a machine with a basic Promise SATA controller and booted up
Western Digital's diagnostic program to test the drive. The DLGDIAG
program reported "DRIVE IS LOCKED".

It turns out that the 3Ware card "locks" the drive and it is only
unlockable (according to 3Ware) by shutting down the server, connecting
the bad drive back to the 9500S, pulling all of the other drives so they
are not seen on bootup, power up the machine, go into the 3Ware BIOS and
delete the array that the drive belongs to. Then power down and
reconnect all of the other drives. This of course is not something I
want to have to do. Kind of defeats the idea of having a hot-swap RAID
system that stays up all the time.

Short of buying another 9500S card to use once in a (hopefully great)
while to unlock a bad drive, does anyone know of a way to unlock a
drive? Any utility that does this? I had not heard of this "feature"
before.

Thanks,

Steve
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top