5.3 Given a scenario, troubleshoot and diagnose problems with storage drives and RAID arrays.

Question 1

Light emitting Diode (LED) Status indicators.

Answer 1

1. State= Power down, Color= not lit, Descripting= Device is off
2. State= Powering up, Color= blue, Appearance= Blinking, Description= Device is powering on or in the process of updating firmware.
3. State= power up, color= Blue, Appearance= Solid, Description= Device is powered up and ready.

4 State= System failure, Color= Red, Appearance= blinking, Description= System fault (e.g., firmware update failed, system hang, fan not working etc).

5. State= Standby, Color= blue, appearance= Pulsing (slowly on and off), Description= System is on standby.
6. State=User attention required, Color= red, appearance= solid, Description= Device is powered up but user attaention is needed.

Question 2

Grinding noises

Answer 2

Produced if the read head hits the platter without freezing its rotation.

Can be caused by power failure that causes the head to stay still over the platter and collapse on it. Friction made by the moving platter and the stuck head may produce grinding noises.

Jerks or falls may cause the head to stick to the platter resulting in grinding.

Hard drive is so thin that overheating may deform it. due to deformity head that is attached to the arm may get in contact with platter.

Question 3

Clicking sounds

Answer 3

Caused by the read/write heads making contact with platters. Serious damage that cannot be prepared. Back up all the data if that is possible. If data is not readable only option to recover is using professional service.

Question 4

Bootable device not found

Answer 4

Can be caused by:

1. failure of the system to locate the “boot files”.
2. If “IDE drive not ready” message appears at startup the drive may not be spinning fast enough to read. Enable or increase hark disk predelay time.
3. If “Immediatley back up all your data and replace your hard drive” appears then A fault may be imminent. Means the drive is Self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology (SMART) to predict a failure.
4. Hard drive data cable or power cable may have become unseated . Sometimes resetting cable is fine. Ensure that the data cable has not been reversed.

Question 5

Data loss/corruption

Answer 5

• Hard drives are mechanical devices– They will eventually fail
• Repairs are difficult and expensive– Dust-free environment– Not always successful
• An SSD may simply stop working– Sometimes can read but not write
• Data becomes unavailable or corrupted– Can be impossible to recover
• ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP

Question 6

RAID failure

Answer 6

When hardware-based RAID is implemented a RAID controller card is installed into a slot and the RAID drives connect to the controller card. When RAID array cannot be located its a problem with the controller card.

Make sure RAID is set in BIOS. Make sure drives are connected to the same port group.

Check all the cables connecting the drives to the motherboard reseating them to ensure a good connection. Ensure that BIOS/UEFI is set to RAID.

Ensure that card is seated properly if there is no integrated controller and card is installed into a slot. Ensure all drives are securely connected to the ribbon cable coming from the controller card.

Question 7

Self-monitoring, Analysis,
and Reporting Technology
(S.M.A.R.T.) failure

Answer 7

System included in hard drives and solid-state drives that detects and reports on drive reliability and anticipated hard drive failures.

Should back up all data as soon as possible even if drive is performing normally and passes other disk checks.

Question 8

Extended read/write times

Answer 8

Insufficient memory can lead to slow access to drive. Causes excessive paging. Can also be caused by a drive that needs to be defragmented. When drive is fragmented it takes much longer for all of the parts of a file to be located before the file will open. Insufficient drive space will slow performance. Slow performance also caused by controller cards that need updating, improper data cables and slower devices sharing the same cable with the hard drive.

Question 9

Input/output operations per
second (IOPS)

Answer 9

Disk Input/output operations per second (IOPS) represents the number of reads and writes that can be done in a second. SSDS exhibit much higher IOPS values than traditional hard disk drives.

Question 10

Missing drives in OS

Answer 10

If system does not recognize the drive, the problem could be:

Hard drive data cable or power cable may have become unseated.

If you just added a drive, ensure that both drives have not been set to primary or secondary and that the boot drive is set as primary on the first channel.

If systems uses SATA and you just added a drive, ensure that all the onboard SATA ports are enabled.

If you added a drive, ensure that there is no conflict between the new drive and another device.

If you receive the “no boot device, stike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility” message, the cause could be incorrect drive geometry, bad CMOS battery, or inability to locate the active partition or master boot record.