Restore RAID configuration

PhilTBRPhilTBR
edited February 2004 in Hardware
I have a Dell PowerEdge 4200 running Windows 2000.

  • PhoenixBIOS version 4.05 A05
  • Embedded server management firmware revision 39
  • System backplane firmware revision 9
  • Power supply parallelling board firmware revision 10
  • RAID 2 adapter BIOS version 1.44
  • Host adapter 0 firmware version U.75 DRAM size 16MB
  • Adaptec AIC-7880 Ultra/Ultra W BIOS version 1.26s6 Dells6
I am running 6 – 16.8GB hard drives under RAID 5. Recently, two of the drives failed. I was unable to force either of them online from within the PERC BIOS. Without writing down the configuration information (although I believe it was the same as the default when creating a new configuration), I created a new configuration. Fearing I had goofed, I did not save the new configuration. Subsequently, I had no logical drive configured. I then cleared the NVRAM by jumping the EISA pins and booting. After un-jumping the pins, I went to flash the NVRAM using Dell'sflash utility BR2A0505.exe, but I was prompted that the flash would not do anything since the same data already existed there, so I aborted. Then I ran Dell's configuration utility EISA_D08.exe. I rebooted, thinking I would be able to choose from the PERC BIOS to restore the configuration from the hard drives, but this did not happen. I then created a new configuration Logical Drive 0 using what I believed to be the original parameters (the defaults), saved it but did not initialize it, and rebooted. Again my old configuration was not restored and I was also not given an option to restore the configuration from the hard drives.

I want to be able to restore my old configuration, force one of my bad hard drives online, replace/rebuild the other, then replace/rebuild the last bad one. From what I have read, I understand that in order to be prompted to restore my old configuration from my hard drives, I actually need to clear the PERC memory, not the NVRAM.

However, I’m sure I have tinkered with this too much as it is, which is why I am now writing this post.

I would like to know if my data is still recoverable, and if so, exactly what I must do to recover it.

Thanks, Phil
Sign In or Register to comment.