On one of our SQL servers I used an Adaptec 2810SA RAID controller card with three SATA drives in RAID 5. The server has suddenly passed away: at startup it got stuck on the initialization phase of the map and ended by displaying a time out.
Fortunately I had an Adaptec 2820SA and store cards such as the RAID configuration on the disks themselves and not cached, the map change was possible with hopefully not lose any data. So I removed the map in 2810 noting the order of connection of the three hard drives, added in 2820 and reconnected the drives in the same order. At startup the card initializes properly and displays a message indicating the presence of a RAID 5 while abroad it must accept as configuration to use. RAID 5 will go into Recovery mode / Verifying and is immediately usable.
Problem, however: the version of the map is not quite the same, Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 rebooting the launch. It was therefore necessary to reinstall it in repair mode and providing a disk with drivers for the new RAID controller card. Once this is completed, all data and programs installed and was operating the server could return to production.
A total period of downtime was three hours, for a server "noname" is quite acceptable, especially without data loss.
Tags: Disaster recovery , RAID
