Recovering From An Incomplete Format Of A Physical Drive - IBM Netfinity ServeRAID-4H Ultra160 User Reference

operation, the drive being rebuilt is in the rebuild state, and the logical drive remains
critical until the rebuild operation has been successfully completed.
On IBM servers, when a hot-spare drive is available, the Rebuild operation begins
automatically without the need to replace the failed drive. If more than one drive
fails, the Rebuild operation begins rebuilding the first failed drive to the hot-spare
drive. If you do not know which drive failed first, the rebuild operation can corrupt
your data.
To start a Hot-Swap Rebuild, do the following:
1. Reseat the ServeRAID controller and SCSI cables.
2. Without removing the drive completely, gently remove the physical drive from
3. Wait 20 seconds to allow the physical drive to completely spin down.
4. If you are certain there is nothing wrong with the physical drive you removed,

Recovering from an incomplete format of a physical drive

During formatting of a physical drive, if the format process is stopped by a system
reset, system shut down, power outage, or by some other means, the physical drive
becomes inoperable.
To enable the physical drive to communicate with the ServeRAID controller again,
do the following:
1. Note the channel of the ServeRAID controller to which the physical drive is
2. Note the SCSI ID of the physical drive.
3. Use the ipssend format function to restart the format of the physical drive. The
the server, using the handle of the hot-swap tray. If necessary, refer to the
documentation that comes with your server on removing a physical drive.
Note: When power is removed from a hot-swap drive, the drive immediately
parks the heads, locks the actuator in the "landing zone", and begins
spinning down. However, the spinning down of the disk might require up
to 20 seconds after power is removed. Do not move the drive while it is
spinning down. Moving the drive while it is spinning down might damage
the drive.
gently reinstall the drive into the server. Make sure the drive is completely
installed in the backplane connector.
Note: It is possible to rebuild a defunct physical drive to an online physical
drive that is defective.
Otherwise, replace the physical drive with a new drive that is the same size (or
larger) and continue with the Rebuild operation.
connected.
syntax is: ipssend format controller channel sid
where:
v controller is the ServeRAID controller number (1–12)
v channel is the channel number for the device (1, 2, 3, or 4)
v sid is the SCSI ID for the device (0–15)
After the format is complete, the ServeRAID controller will be able to recognize
the drive again.
Chapter 12. Solving ServeRAID problems
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