Rebuilding a Drive

If a drive in a mirrored virtual drive (RAID 1 or RAID 1E) fails, the MegaRAID Storage Manager software automatically rebuilds the data on a hot spare drive to prevent data loss. The rebuild is a fully automatic process, so it is not necessary to issue a rebuild command.

You can monitor the progress of drive rebuilds in the Group Show Progress window. To open this window, select Group Operations > Show Progress.

You must replace a failed drive, and you must rebuild the data on the drive on a new drive to restore the system to fault tolerance. (You can choose to rebuild the data on the failed drive if the drive is still operational.) If hot spare drives are available, the failed drive is rebuilt automatically without any user intervention.

A red circle to the right of the drive icon () indicates that a drive has failed. A yellow circle appears next to the icon of the virtual drive that uses this drive. This icon indicates that the virtual drive is in a degraded state; the data is still safe, but data could be lost if another drive fails.

When the new drive spins up, the drive icon changes to green as the rebuild begins, and an up-arrow appears above the drive icon.

Perform these steps to rebuild a drive:

1.	Right click the icon of the failed drive, and select Rebuild.

2.	Click Yes when the warning message appears.

If the drive is still good, a rebuild will start.

You can monitor the progress of drive rebuilds in the Group Show Progress window. To open this window, select Group Operations > Show Progress. If the drive cannot be rebuilt, an error message appears. Continue with the next step.

3.	Shut down the system, disconnect the power cord, and open the computer case.

4.	Replace the failed drive with a new drive of equal capacity.

5.	Close the computer case, reconnect the power cord, and restart the computer.

6.	Restart the MegaRAID Storage Manager software.

When the new drive spins up, the drive icon changes back to normal status, and the rebuild process starts automatically. You can monitor the progress of the rebuild in the Group Show Progress window by selecting Manage > Show Progress.

If you want to force a drive into Fail status to trigger a rebuild, right-click the drive icon, and select Make Drive Offline. A red circle appears next to the drive icon. Right-click the icon, and select Rebuild from the pop-up menu. You cannot abort a drive rebuild.

NOTE  A drive rebuild is also started if you select Make Drive Online from the pop-up menu.