Raid array listing failed drive thats stopping my array from being accessible

I have an adaptec 3254 16i. Its lsitong a failed direct attached device that doesnt exist. Thats stopping my array from being accessible.

I tried using arccon tondelete the device butnitnsaysbit doesnt exist and I cannot delete it. Ive tried rebooting. There is an option to delete all RIS metadata not part of an array but im scared to try tonthisbas it might lose my data.

Please any and all help will be appreciated.

What version of arcconf are you running? You can get into some weird situations if running an older version than that the card officially supports.
Does maxview show the same error information? In my experience it tends to be much more useful than arcconf.
Did you recently update the controller firmware?

No i have not changed anything, maxview shows the same configuration and the same error. I use maxview primarily, im unsure what arccon version itnis but i auto install it beside max view. Im using maxview 2023.

What produced this error, was that i lost power to the array and turned the power back on, so power to the expanders and drives was lost. And then i turned off the PC and restarted the machine.

I have other issues, that i believe belong too the the original time i built an array. Then i rebuilt an array using the same drives. So there are alot of failed devices, and complete array availability size is double than that of what i have available. At 450tb, instead of 200tb and change. But thebarray was working at that time.

Im unsure how to delete or remove any possible background meta data of arrays that no longer exist. I just dont want to start again. It was 120tb full.

ahh I see, I think all my original questions were going in the wrong direction then.

It kind of sounds like atleast one of the drives might have reverted back to exposing old raid array metadata; it might be possible bypass this error assuming only one of the phantom failed devices is holding the array up, by disconnecting that offending device so that it isn’t giving the confusing metadata to the controller (I’m assuming this is a parity raid) and then using the array in a degraded state so that you can atleast backup before doing anything riskier.

The more proper option would be to recreate the array without initializing the disks which would effectively erase all the raid metadata and reconstruct it without touching the data on the disks… This option is much more risky and I wouldn’t attempt it first and ideally you’d be able to have some test disks and try this operation out to get a feel for how it works.

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Ill just try that i guess. I dont know whatvelse tondo. You cannot delete phantom disks or devices for some reason. Which really pisses me off. Im assuming the array its trying to access isnthe most recent one i built. So how do i go ahead and do what you said.

Actually ignore what I said about recreating arrays without initialization, it looks like maxview has some newer/better options for accomplishing the same thing.

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First, maybe before doing this. Do you think i should try delete RIS metadata “not belonging to annarray” first? Ornwill this also lose my current data?

Ive tried this, with 2 drives, it says too many drives to heal the array and with 1 drive it says healing failed.

But 4 drives show up to heal the array . Probably from the previous array. Anyway. Any config i try fails to heal the areay

I’d wait till I exhausted more options before resorting to deleting RIS metadata because I’m not certain it’s going to delete the correct metadata.

does the force online give better results than healing?

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I dont think i have tried force online. How do i go about doing this. And cheers for your help

I’d do the force onlining through MSM, it should be in the logical drive ribbon.

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Im sorry, what is yhrough msm?

Ooh maxview storage manager

its maxview storage manager, the fancy administration tool with the gui

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Yeahbhaha i got it. Yeah ill do ot now

Damn… the available force online operation is not available due to the support bit.

I fant force it online.

see here, Device 254. This device is stopping the array from coming online.

I think i have to delete RIS data, and if my data is gone then so be it. I need to find a way to reset all Metadata, and piss off the phantom drives.

one more thing to check, if you view one of the physical drive’s summary page, does it show “Has Stale RIS Data: True”. This would make a case for the clear RIS data operation.

also that’s really weird that the device count goes all the way to 254, makes me think there might be expander involvement atleast in the creation of the error.

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no mate, none of the devices have stale RIS data…