Had to run chkdsk 2x this week already...any advice??

[rodentcentre]

Windows 2003 Standard (Member Server not DC)
Dell PowerEdge 2650
Dell PowerVault 220S
About 800GB worth of storage in a RAID 10?? (How can I tell??)
I have been getting errors in the event log from ntfs stating that "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume C:". I run this with the /f /r flags, reboot and let it run. Everything comes back up beautifully, however, this is the second time this week that I have had to run it. I am worried that at some point it is just going to fail and I'll be up the crick without a paddle. Now, I've got a nightly backup running with Veritas but I don't think I can restore the entire OS and all of the settings and programs from that. We have no imaging software available to us but I definitely think it would be well worth it as I found this thread talking about this. My question is when I want to image the drive what type of external hard drive should I use?? I have 1 USB port on the front of the server to plug into. Anything else I might want to know or things to check for?? Thanks a lot.

 

[rodentcentre]

Anyone??

 

[karmic]

ok, raid 10 is a stripe across a set of mirrors if i'm not mistaken...

I'm so rusty with dell servers now, been avoiding them like the plague for the last couple of years... Do you by chance have any raid monitor software installed? If not, you'd better contact dell asap and track some down. Sounds to me like you may have a drive or two on the way out...

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[rodentcentre]

Yep, I've got the OpenManage Array Manager installed...the trouble is I really have no idea how to read everything that is there...can you tell by looking at this configuration

Arrays
PERC Subsystem 1
PERC 4/DC Controller 0
Array Group 0
Virtual Disk 2
Array Disk 1:0 68.24 GB
Array Disk 1:1 68.24 GB
.
.
.
Array Disk 1:9 68.24 GB
PERC Subsystem 2
PERC 3/Di Controller 1 (AFAO)
Array Group 0
Virtual Disk 0
Array Disk 0:0 33.92 GB
Array Disk 0:1 33.92 GB
Virtual Disk 1
Array Disk 1:2 136.73 GB
Array Disk 1:3 136.73 GB
Array Disk 1:4 136.73 GB
Backplane (Channel 0)
Array Disk 0:0 33.92 GB
Array Disk 0:1 33.92 GB
Backplane (Channel 1)
Array Disk 1:2 136.73 GB
Array Disk 1:3 136.73 GB
Array Disk 1:4 136.73 GB

 

[karmic]

Hmmm... looks like one mirror and 2 raid 5's. That thing must weigh a ton... I can't remember if there's a true raid monitor software included in the openmanage software that could tell you if there's a drive on the way out... May be time to give dell a quick shout to see if there's any other software add-ons you can use.

Otherwise, reboot the server and access the perc controller and check on the health. It should give you an indication there. I have a few clients with dell servers, but i'm nowhere near any of them.



~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~