Question LSI RAID card with 2 foreign unconfigured good that used to be in the RAID

[mac_angel]

I have a pair of 9361-8i w/ CacheCade (no battery backup). Over the weekend I had one of the cards say that a hard drive failed and couldn't rebuilt; 1 out of 5 (RAID 5), 8TB enterprise class that I got in May. MegaRAID Storage Manager couldn't even see the serial number or anything. I disconnected it, and unplugged the RAID card to take it offline, and plugged the drive directly into the motherboard. I ran Seatools, long fix, and it didn't find any problems at all; there was nothing in the log. I went to connect it back to the RAID, and the RAID card saw that one, but another drive was missing. Not 'bad', just not listed. I figured out which one it was, unplugged them and plugged it back in, and started up. MegaRAID Storage Manager now sees both of those drives, but are now listed as Foreign, Unconfigured Good. No data has been written or moved or anything on the RAID, so I'm trying to figure out how to get them back on the RAID without it trying to 'rebuild', which isn't even an option.
I tried scanning foreign configuration, but that fails (more than likely because the 2 drives with the foreign configuration are incomplete). Only thing I can think of is to kick them all off the RAID and then scan the foreign configuration.

 

[USAFRet]

No data has been written or moved or anything on the RAID, so I'm trying to figure out how to get them back on the RAID without it trying to 'rebuild', which isn't even an option.

Why is that not an option.

Reconfigure the RAID from scratch, recover the data from the full backup.

 

[mac_angel]

Why is that not an option.

Reconfigure the RAID from scratch, recover the data from the full backup.

rebuild RAID 5 with 2 drives kicked out. RAID 5 can only rebuild with one drive being missing/replaced.
"recover the data from the full backup", not sure what you mean.

 

[USAFRet]

rebuild RAID 5 with 2 drives kicked out. RAID 5 can only rebuild with one drive being missing/replaced.
"recover the data from the full backup", not sure what you mean.

Yes, I know a RAID 5 can only survive the loss of one physical drive.

The "backup" comment was regarding the actual second copy of all this data, somewhere else.

The RAID 5 is only good for physical drive redundancy. And as you see, sometimes not even that.

This is where a real backup routine comes into play.

 

[mac_angel]

Yes, I know a RAID 5 can only survive the loss of one physical drive.

The "backup" comment was regarding the actual second copy of all this data, somewhere else.

The RAID 5 is only good for physical drive redundancy. And as you see, sometimes not even that.

This is where a real backup routine comes into play.

yea, I haven't been able to figure out how to afford to do a backup. This is for home use, on a Plex media server with lots of large video files. Any backup that I've looked into costs thousands of dollars that I don't have.

added: I'm pretty sure I've had something like this happen before, but I can't remember the details. A couple of drives kicked off the RAID, and I was able to put them back, but it might have been just switching bad to good, not finding a foreign unconfigured good. As I said, the only thing that I can think of (and haven't had any luck on Google so far) was kicking them all off, clearing the configuration from the card, plugging them back in and scanning for foreign configurations. That's sort of what I had to do when I swapped out the RAID card a couple of months ago.

 

[USAFRet]

yea, I haven't been able to figure out how to afford to do a backup. This is for home use, on a Plex media server with lots of large video files. Any backup that I've looked into costs thousands of dollars that I don't have.

No, all it needs is a few other drives, some module to put them in, and free/cheap software.

And data you do not wish to lose NEEDS to be baked up.

But thats all water under the bridge, and info for next time.

I am at a loss as for how to fix your current issue.