[OpenIndiana-discuss] Replacing an unavailable hd...

[Gary Gendel]

On 06/16/2014 05:05 AM, John Doe via openindiana-discuss wrote:
> From: Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru>
>> If you are uncertain if the HDD device has really failed, you can also
>> try to take apart the computer and remove-replug the power and signal
>> cables, perhaps a few times. This may cleanse them of oxydation and
>> repair the storage - happened to me dozens of times on both home-made
>> rigs and brand servers (though rarely on the latter).
>>
>> Also, while you're near the box taken apart, you can listen to the
>> disk if it "squeaks" and vibrates when powered on, or no longer works
>> mechanically indeed.
>>
>> In fact, recently we've had a power outage that rebooted a couple of
>> old servers who had a dead and unresponsive HDD each (the poor boxes
>> waited for replacements to be purchased and received), and now the
>> disks are back online - several scrubs found no problems (that is,
>> after the initial resilver/scrub which complained a lot due to lots
>> of stale data). So there was even no mechanical replugging, just a
>> power cycle.
> Hum... the server is a bit less than 2 years old, and all disks are
> plugged on the same back-plane, so I would be surprised if it was a
> cabling issue.  And, since I have spares, I prefer to replace the
> suspect disk to be safe and test it later...  If it is indeed a
> cabling issue, the new disk will also look failed I guess.
>
> If it helps, cfgadm -alv says:
> sata0/2  disconnected unconfigured failed
>
> I did not yet go onsite to witness if there is any red led.
>
After a moving the server to temporary quarters, I had a similar 
situation. I was able to bring the disk back up remotely (several hours 
drive away) with the following commands:

cfgadm -cunconnect <dev>
cfgadm -cconnect <dev>
cfgadm -cconfigure <dev>

This situation kept happening (failing between a day and a week later), 
even when I finally moved it to new quarters.  I then re-seated the 
controller card and cables.  It's been running for several months 
without a complaint.  I did see that sometimes when the disk failed it 
would even show up as not connected.

I tried rebooting for awhile which sometimes worked, but I was much more 
successful with the above commands and it didn't require bringing the 
machine offline.

Even without the move, there is enough vibration to cause problems with 
marginal connections so I concur with Jim that it could occur.

Gary