I’ll add that Dell will replace the drive when it starts blinking amber, but they do get testy if they find out bus/controller drivers or drive firmware is out of date.  I usually find that if reseating the drive yields another blinking amber that the drive is probably in need of replacement.

 

 

 

Ya got an interesting one there, Al:

 

Sense key 5: “Illegal Request : Indicates an illegal parameter in the command descriptor block or in the additional parameters supplied as data for some commands (Format Unit, Mode Select, and so forth). If the disc drive detects an invalid parameter in the Command Descriptor Block, it shall terminate the command without altering the medium. If the disc drive detects an invalid parameter in the additional parameters supplied as data, the disc drive may have already altered the medium. This sense key may also indicate that an invalid IDENTIFY message was received. This could also indicate an attempt to write past the last logical block.”

 

Sense code 24 (0x18) : “invalid field in CDB (command descriptor block)”

 

Sense qualifier code 0 : “Recovered data with error correction applied”

 

Almost sounds like a device driver or bus issue as opposed to an actual disk issue. Note that the error is being reported for multiple devices, which may support my conjecture of a bus issue. Maybe check connectors, cables, RAID card in slot, etc.?

 

Regards,

 

John Fishbeck

Physical Plant Computer Systems & Networking Group

 

 

 

Hi everyone,

A few days ago, we noticed one of the drive lights on our Poweredge 2950 blinking amber. This apparently indicates a predicted failure of said drive. The attached error log would seem to confirm this; However, this morning, we rebooted the server in order to perform diagnostics. Immediately upon reboot, the amber light went away. The RAID controller doesn’t show any issues with the drive, and we are currently performing a consistency check on the virtual disk.

At this point, I’m very suspicious of the drive and or this integrated Perc 5/i, but I’m not sure how to pinpoint what is going on. Over the past 2 years, we have had several failures: Two of the drives that initially shipped with the server failed simultaneously and we actually lost our array. We replaced those drives and later, another failed. We then removed all the drives and replaced them with new drives. Most recently, we began seeing this predicted failure light pattern. However today after rebooting, everything mysteriously seems fine.

Any suggestions for diagnosing something like this would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

 

Al Puzzuoli

Michigan State University

Information Technologist                                       http://www.rcpd.msu.edu

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