So, I’ve been toying with Windows Server 2008 for a few weeks, and have ironed out most of the kinks… until I came across this little issue…
The server I used has a 3ware Escalade 7000 RAID card (2-port SATA). There are no “official” Server 2008 drivers, but their support said that the latest drivers work just fine in Server 2008, and it does run.
Almost immediately after installation, 3DM2 (3ware’s latest management utility) said that one of the drives has failed and my RAID 1 array was degraded. Well, I bought a new drive, plopped it in… and could not make it part of the array… it wanted to be listed as a spare drive…
So I hop into the bios utility and force the extra drive into the RAID 1 array. No problems.
Then in Windows I went into 3dm2 and did a rebuild. It starts proceeding just fine until I get an email that “rebuild failed”. This is the exact message I got about the other drive, which prompted me to buy a replacement.
So, I think there is nothing wrong with my drives, but the beta drivers just don’t work. (I even did a sector scan on the “bad” drive and it was perfectly fine). I cannot find any support information on 3ware’s site, or any forums. Certainly someone else in this world is using a 3ware Escalade RAID card on Server 2008. I really want to keep Server 2008 because IIS7 is just so much better than IIS6. I COULD use the motherboard’s onboard RAID instead of the 3ware card, but there would be no management utilities, no auto-rebuilds, or any of the other features that make server-level RAID worthwhile.
Does anyone have any advice?
2 comments
Same has happen to me with 7006 and a Debian Linux server.
It started with a degraded disk, which I rebuiled with the result 'failed' in 3dm2. But everything looked fine, and on the monitor I got the message 'complete'. Later I changed the disks because of a power-on-time more than 5,5 year. Same scenario; 3dm2 says that the rebuild failed, but the status of the RAID is 'OK', everything looks fine and on the monitor I got the message 'complete'. And in this case; if the rebuild wasn't successful, then the new disks shouldn't be working – but they do :)
Old thread but in case someone else needs it I have the same problem but with ws 2003. Rebuilt many times trying different methods with the same results – so far no joy. 8600 controller with 500Gb Hitachi Deskstar Drives. Seems to proceed to the end of the rebuild process before error occurs.
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