Raid Controller Beeping - Failed Drive

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Hi all,

I've just purchased an old Xeon 2.8 Dual core dual processor server with a megaraid controller and 4 SCSI disks. There are a couple problems on it that I don't know how to fix:

1.The raid controller is beeping and one of the bays is flashing orange / green. I've never used Raid before so not sure if this is a failed drive or not. It is setup in RAID 5 I think, shall I remove the offending drive and setup in another array? Maybe Raid 1? I would give you some more info with error messages but I have chose the 'rebuild' option and now I have to wait.

2. Just after post I get error messages about both processors, one seems to have failed and one is having problems. When booted into Server 2008 it only shows 1 processor in device manager and 2 graphs in task manager (dual core cpus). I take it this means one of the processors died. Shall I try and reseat it?

Any help is appreciated, I would like to know if it's worth buying new parts for this or whether I should do some more troubleshooting. Thanks

edit: I cancelled the rebuild and made the drive 'online' and the beeping has stopped but I'm pretty sure the drive is failing.

Processor messages:

8140: Processor 01: failed FRB level 3 timer
8141:Processor 02: failed FRB level 3 timer
8131: Processor 02: Disabled
84FF: System Event Log Full

Can anyone tell me what these messages mean? Thanks

 

With regards to the CPU, does it have a VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) that's next to it? is it the same spec as the other one? I would try reseating the cpu, actually both, give the machine a spring clean because if it's old it could well have developed thermal creep, simply removing, dusting and reseating can sometimes add more life to a system.

I would also see what happens if you remove one cpu at a time and power up, do they both work? do they both work in the same slot\socket and in the other ones?

As far as raid goes, generally speaking if it's gone once it will go again, you're definitely best off getting a replacement drive (in my personal experience you may well find the drive works well for another 6 months, or it could fail today).

 

Thanks for the help guys it's sorted now. I gave it a good clean out and reseated everything. One thing I did have to do was to reset the processors in the BIOS (one had been disabled). Now they are both present in the OS and it's a lot quieter thanks to the better airflow / lower temps.

The hard drive is also working ok but I guess it's going to die at some point. I have 5 bays, 2 good drives and 1 questionable drive. I can't really afford to fork out for another SCSI drive and to be honest I don't even need it on my lab server anyway. In fact, I think the extra disk space / performance would be more valuable than redundancy. Is it RAID 1 that gives better performance?