Any idea why my RAID card did this?

jtvang125

Diamond Member
Nov 10, 2004
5,399
51
91
This is on a Highpoint 2340 configured for RAID5. Awhile back one drive kept dropping out so I bought a new drive to replace it. However it went into auto rebuilding so I let it finish. I figured I'll just add it as a hot spare now and if the one having issues kicks out again it'll use the hot spare to rebuild. That worked out fine.

My brother then gave me 2 brand new drives that I tried to use to expand the array. After plugging these in the raid management software somehow created 2 new arrays from these drives. 1 array was 14TB using one of the drives and bunch of offline disks (don't know where it got those from) and the other was 26TB using the 2nd new drive and a bunch of other offline disks. Both arrays showed Disable though.

I wanted the 2 drives back but decided to leave it alone because I didn't want to do anything that might affect the active array. Later I then tried powering the server off and ejecting the 2 drives to see what would happen. Well nothing happened and the active array has been fine. The disabled arrays are now gone and it hasn't been complaining about them either. So I'm wondering how did those 2 disabled arrays get created with a bunch of offline drives.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
39,477
20,155
146
Sounds like those drives were already part of an array, so probably not brand new, and had existing array metadata on them. The 2340 saw that and tried to import the config.
 

jtvang125

Diamond Member
Nov 10, 2004
5,399
51
91
I think you guys might be right. The one showing it's part of a 26TB array was the drive I initially set as the hot spare. Strange that it didn't recognize the config correctly but maybe it's because I moved it to a different channel. The "new" drive probably isn't as new as I've been told.

Thanks.