Adaptec RAID contoller issue

[perdrix]

I have an Adaptec ASR-51245 RAID controller with 8 drives in a RAID-5 array.

With the array in good condition, if I shut the system down and then restart, the last drive is most often not detected on power-up. Once the system is back up in degraded mode, I can force a "re-scan" to pick up the last drive and the array is then rebuilt over the next 8 hours or so.

I have set the "spin-up" limit to 1 in the hope that this would prevent the problem, but it still persists.

Does anyone have an ideas as to what might be wrong or can be done to resolve this?

Thanks, David

 

[james23]

I have seen this before but with a 5805 when using a SAS1 lsi backplane (supermicro, bpn-sas-846el1). I dont recall the exact drive count, but i think it was any drives over 8x, it would not detect (or would not spin them up maybe?). ( i think i may even have a post here on STH about it from 4 or so years ago)

my "fix" was to eliminate the expander, and go direct attached (ie i bought a 51645 so could connect directly to drives). been running years with no issues, in this setup.

can you provide some more info, ie what drive types, how are they connected?
(have you upgraded the 51245's FW ?).

also i would disable any/all power saving stuff (ie the spinup limit). it could be they are not spinning up fast enough bc of your 1x lmit during POST / startup. I think on these cards you can adjust that stuff via a menu buried in the cards BIOS setup/menus.

lmk tks

 

[perdrix]

I swapped the last drive for another and it seems that it must have been a "slow to spin-up" drive even though it reports no errors.

Anyway it is all *knock on wood" working OK now.

Dave

 

[Sixthofmay]

Good call. I toss drives the moment they show any issues.

If staggered spinup causes POST issues, some BIOSes let you delay the POST (delay is usually adjustable).