Technical Bulletin GDC Technology Ltd.

Document 103
Instructional Notice on Checking Health of a RAID Drive
 Distributor  Software Feature
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 Technician 
 Hardware Information
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 Operator  System/ Network Setup
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Products: SX- 3000 with PSD, SX-2000(A/T)R, SX-2000(A/T), SX-2001, SA-2100

Software: All Versions

Degraded RAID Array

If the Raid status section of the Control Panel reads Degraded Array instead of Online, this could mean
that there is an issue with the hard drives that compose the RAID array. This document is to help guide
you through the steps in identifying and removing a failing hard drive from the RAID array.

Drives and RAID Diagnostic

The health of the RAID drives can be found in The Storage section of the Control Panel.
Drive Status (Drive Health): All drives should say OK; if any drives display a FAILING status then that is a
confirmed failure.
Raid Status: Should display Online normally. If a drive has dropped out, has been manually removed, or
if the raid is rebuilding; it will read Degraded Array.
Usage: XX of 2.1T. Unless purchased a higher capacity, this should always say 2.1T for total disk space. If
this reads 25G then it is a major issue as it means the RAID did not mount. If this is so, please do not
ingest any content as it can copy on to the OS disk of the server.

Hard Drive Diagnostics August 2013

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Below are instructions on how to find the drive model along with how to test for a bad drive.
These will take place in the Storage System Management options menu within the Control Panel.
I. Enter the Admin Panel from the Control panel  [Admin Panel] and log in with the password
configos

II. Click on the [Storage System Management] button.

1. Checking the drives in the RAID array

I. Select the [Monitor RAID Status] button.

II. The top line will read the drives active in the RAID array. The below picture shows all 3 drives are
active. If one of the drives is missing (sdb/sdc/sdd) that will indicate a specific drive possibly
have errors that can be found in the next steps.

III. Click on the white of the screen, and then click/type Ctrl and C to exit this screen.

Hard Drive Diagnostics August 2013

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 Technical Bulletin GDC Technology Ltd.

Checking the Health of individual drives

I. Click on the [Hard Disk Information] button in the Storage System Management menu.

II. You will need to select each of the raid drives one at a time (sdb/sdc/sdd) and check the
information in the below steps. The drive type will be on this screen, for the example below
these are 340NS model hard drives.

RAID Drives

Model Number

Serial Number

Drive Models
340NS – Seagate Barracuda
524NS – Seagate Constellation
526SV – Current Seagates
HUA_7220 – Current Hitachi Models
HUA_7210 – Older Hitachi Models
Various Western Digital model drives
begin with WD.

III. Click on 1 of the 3 RAID drives and click the [Select] button.
IV. The system will now preform a “health check” on the hard drive. This health check takes
approximetly 1 second. Follow the upcoming steps in oredr to interpret the results.

Hard Drive Diagnostics August 2013

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 Technical Bulletin GDC Technology Ltd.

V. Scroll all the way to the top; you will need to confirm that the drive letter you chose is the
correct one that appears at the top. If the hard disk information screen is missing the top item
(/dev/md0), this will actually throw off the drive information you see by one drive. This is just a
bug for this particular screen. So if /dev/md0 is missing, selecting the top most drive will show
the information for /dev/md0 instead of SDD and so on. The drive you are actually looking at
will show up at the very top of the information screen after selecting one of the drives.

VI. Check for the section below and is the self assessment test Pass or Fail.

VII. Scroll down to the SMART Attributes data

structure section and check the
WHEN_FAILED column to see if there is
anything in that column other than a dash.
Please note that if a drive comes up as “IN
THE PAST” for 190 attribute that is okay.

VIII. In this case the results of the test read “No Errors Logged” in the space for the total count of
ATA errors. Anything more than 10 ATA errors could be seen as a failing drive.

This is an example of a healthy drive.

IX. Perform this hard drive check on each drive in order to find existing errors on 1 or more drives.

Ordering a Drive Replacement / RMA

After identifying a failing hard drive in the RAID set, contact your regional service technician to process
an RMA for a replacement drive with the following information provided:
1. Server serial number.
2. Drive model.
3. Description of the hard drive failure (in detail).
4. Theatre or site name.
5. Full shipping address and local point of contact.

Hard Drive Diagnostics August 2013

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Removing the Failing Drive from the RAID Array

Once you have identified the failing drive, you will want to remove it from the RAID set to prevent any
future playback issues. Please use the following steps to do so.

I. In the Storage System Management menu, click on [Remove disk from RAID array]

II. Select the faulty hard drive from the list that was noted in the earlier steps, and click
on the [Select] button.

III. The screen will show a confirmation that the hard drive has been removed from the RAID array.
Click on [Back] to return to the Admin Panel.

IV. The RAID array will now be operating using 2 drives.

Hard Drive Diagnostics August 2013

Copyright 2013 © GDC Technology Limited. All Rights Reserved.