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T320 2008 Server R2 Service Pack 1 Crash (possibility of moving to new with hard drives?)
To begin let me say that I have been at this company for two months, so I only have limited information and no known backups of this system. We responded to the customer when he told us that the server (Domain/AD) has crashed and is sitting at the Recovery screen for windows. This is Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 on a Dell PowerEdge T320 (2013 model). When selecting recovery there are no operating systems or drives available. Suspecting a bad drive, I removed them one by one and loaded them up in an external drive bay and could get to both of them and see that they have two partitions and the data on both looked to be intact. I loaded them up into another identical server and realized that the Virtual Drive would not import the Foreign Configuration though the Controller BIOS (Perc H710 Raid Controller). I then moved everything back to the original server and noticed that the virtual drive was tagged as degraded in the lifecycle controller that one of the physical drives were rebuilding. Once this was completed, I netted the same result with the server only booting into Recovery with no OS or drives present on the recovery page. I have very limited Raid and server configuration knowledge and would like help on how to move forward. The customer has already agreed to purchasing a new server but I am unsure how to get the data over to a new build with no backups and it being such an old version Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. Does anybody know of anything that we can try to get the OS to see these drives and boot again so we can back up and start planning a path forward to a new server and versions? any suggestions would be appreciated.
Specs: Dell PowerEdge T320
8GB
Xeon Processor 1.9
Perc H710 Raid Controller
DELL-Charles R
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February 22nd, 2022 11:00
Hello DonaldJay,
I'm sorry to see the host crashed. If you don't have a backup and need the data you may consider a Data Recovery company.
You mention you put drives back in original host, it showed a degraded array that was rebuilding and you let that continue until it was complete. If that is correct you can try steps below to repair:
https://dell.to/3IbdfrG
H710 driver. Supply the controller driver to the Recovery Environment when prompted:
https://dell.to/3h3HhSe
-Execute file, do Extract, put content on thumb drive, supply when prompted for driver
What did you see that indicated a bad drive?
Try running the hardware diagnostics to test the drives:
Boot to F11 on Dell Splash screen, selecting Boot Manager -> System Utilities -> Launch Dell Diagnostics. Note any messages and continue testing.
DonaldJay
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February 22nd, 2022 16:00
This is what the current status of my drives are as I have returned them to the original server considering the issue follows the drives. Is it possible to clear the config and build a new VD? or would that cause it to clear out the drives completely. I can see all of the data on the drives when in an external bay but in the server it does not see them pointing to the possibility that something need to be configured in the raid setting, but nothing is working as of yet. Could it be missing a boot drive or config?
DELL-Young E
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February 22nd, 2022 19:00
Hi,
Is Background Initialization safe?
https://dell.to/3IkJ69u
DELL-Charles R
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February 23rd, 2022 05:00
Hello DonaldJay,
On the image you attached I can see on top right corner - State: Optimal. That indicates the array is intact but there could be logical corruption.
Can you provide pictures of the controller other tabs: Pd mgmt, Ctrl mgmt, Properties
Also please provide a picture of boot error
Can you let me know the results of the diagnostics?
Boot to F11 on Dell Splash screen, selecting Boot Manager -> System Utilities -> Launch Dell Diagnostics. Note any messages and continue testing.