I recently purchased a Mediasonic ProRaid H8R2-SU3S2, filled it with 8 Hitachi GST Ultrastar A7K2000 and set up the box for RAID 50. Setup of the array went smoothly and proceded to start transfering data into the new array. About 200GB into, the 8th bay in the box displayed an error light. After obtaining a new drive of the exact same type I put it in and powered the box back on. The box autostarted the rebuild process on the 8th bay (the box's led display confirmed that the rebuild was occurring on the 8th drive bay). The array showed up in windows explorer and disk manager as fully functional at the commencement of the rebuild (the box didn't come with any sort of special raid utility program, so I don't have any specific health information from that). I then let the box do its business.
After about an hour or so, the LEDs indicated that the rebuild process had ended, but there was still an error light next to the 8th bay. Additionally, the array did not show up in windows any longer. Thinking this was just some sort of functionality of the raid box (it has pretty bad documentation) I turned the box off and then powered back on, and the error light remained on for the 8th bay, and the rebuild process began yet again! After letting the rebuild "complete" for the second time the error light was still on in the 8th bay, and the box was yet again missing on explorer and disk manager.
How can I tell what the weak link is in this scenario without getting yet another disk involved in the situation? I have trouble believing that the 8th bay of the box was shipped functional and decided to then break 24hrs after setup. On the other hand, while 2 bad drives is more believable, the new drive seems like it is spinning up, and activity seems like it is occurring on the drive during the rebuild process. Is there a way to definitively determine what is at fault before I start RMAing things? There probably is some sort of utility for this situation but I guess I just don't know what to be looking for; ie what error means that the drive is bad and what error means that the box is bad.
Other than finding a utility to asses the problems and RMAing parts until something works, the only solution that I could come up with was to just reformat the entire array and lose the data (the data on the drive is a backup of data not on the array) and see if the box would still display any errors. That way I could change the order of the drives to see if one specifically was faulty or if it was one of the bays on the box that was at fault.
After about an hour or so, the LEDs indicated that the rebuild process had ended, but there was still an error light next to the 8th bay. Additionally, the array did not show up in windows any longer. Thinking this was just some sort of functionality of the raid box (it has pretty bad documentation) I turned the box off and then powered back on, and the error light remained on for the 8th bay, and the rebuild process began yet again! After letting the rebuild "complete" for the second time the error light was still on in the 8th bay, and the box was yet again missing on explorer and disk manager.
How can I tell what the weak link is in this scenario without getting yet another disk involved in the situation? I have trouble believing that the 8th bay of the box was shipped functional and decided to then break 24hrs after setup. On the other hand, while 2 bad drives is more believable, the new drive seems like it is spinning up, and activity seems like it is occurring on the drive during the rebuild process. Is there a way to definitively determine what is at fault before I start RMAing things? There probably is some sort of utility for this situation but I guess I just don't know what to be looking for; ie what error means that the drive is bad and what error means that the box is bad.
Other than finding a utility to asses the problems and RMAing parts until something works, the only solution that I could come up with was to just reformat the entire array and lose the data (the data on the drive is a backup of data not on the array) and see if the box would still display any errors. That way I could change the order of the drives to see if one specifically was faulty or if it was one of the bays on the box that was at fault.
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