Dead SCSI drive (Proliant server)

[Tom41]

Yes, the Compaq Proliant server I've had for just over a year has finally died. I shut it down one day to reroute some network wiring into a more aesthetically pleasing arrangement (involved unplugging the network wires and router), then switched the server on again. I saw on the screen "Non-system disk or disk error".

Rebooting, I watched the BIOS go through its power-up sequence, and saw that the SCSI drive wasn't being recognized and/or wasn't spinning up.
The screen goes "Scanning for SCSI devices..." and at that point, the LED on the front of the drive lights for 1 second then goes out. A couple of seconds later, the screen says "No SCSI drives found!". After that I get the non-system disk error, since there is no boot floppy/CD inserted and the IDE secondary drive is not bootable.

I hear that SCSI drives can have a problem with sticky heads; preventing the drive from seeking or even spinning up! Could that have happened to my drive?

The BIOS is supposed to print on the screen the name and SCSI ID of each device found (in my case a Seagate HDD), before spinning up all the drives it finds. It's not even detecting the drive though. If it was sticky heads, I'd assume it would detect the drive but then fail to spin it up.
The drive doesn't make any noise when the LED flashes (so it's not trying to spin with stuck heads), and I don't see any burnt components on the drive circuit board. There are no burnt components on the server motherboard either, no bulging capacitors, and all leads are in securely.

Thankfully I do have a tape backup dated 1st July - so not all is lost if I can't revive the SCSI drive. The IDE drive is still working perfectly well; I can recover data from that by connecting it to another PC and booting a Live Linux CD. Right now, I'm trying to transfer all the server data onto a spare Mac G4 I have, so I can set that up as a server

Anyone have any suggestions as to reviving the SCSI drive? I'd like to be able to get a more recent backup of my SQL databases than what's on the tape...

[WNG]

Put it in the freezer and chill it down?
Then try to restart it to see if it'll spin up.
If it does boot, back it up asap.

[Per Hansson]

Hmm, wire it up with only the power cable, see if it power up then...

(You may need to make sure the jumpers are not set for delayed start or similar...)

[willawake]

umm...when should i backup...how much data are you ok to lose........

in the end can always try http://hddguru.com/

[Tom41]

Originally Posted by Per Hansson

Hmm, wire it up with only the power cable, see if it power up then...

(You may need to make sure the jumpers are not set for delayed start or similar...)

There are a couple of problems with that actually. Firstly, the drive itself doesn't actually have a separate power molex I could wire up for testing - everything, data and power, comes through a wide SCSI connector. Secondly, the server doesn't even try to spin up the drives as soon as you apply power - it waits for the BIOS to detect the drives, and then spins up whatever it detects.

The moment you apply power to the server machine, the three LEDs on the front of the drive cradle blink in sequence, then go dark again. This is what it should do on startup. At the point where it spins up the HDDs, the middle LED should come on followed by the left LED, then it spins up. But it's not doing this; the middle LED is only flashing once then going out. Maybe I ought to do a search for what the diagnostic LEDs mean, and what jumper or DIP switch controls the delayed start...

[kc8adu]

get an sca adapter and hook up power to it.
disable delay spin and power it up.
give it a sharp snap of the wrist to possibly get it to spin.

[Tom41]

I think the problem is not with the drive heads being sticky. I hit it with a hammer a few times (and probably ruined it even more); it still would not spin up. Like I said, the BIOS is acting as if I'd physically pulled the HDD out of the hot swap bay. That suggests either a dead circuit board on the drive, or the motherboard's SCSI controller is dead. Either way, I can't check since I don't have a spare SCSI drive nor a SCSI controller card.

The server has now gone where my parents have been wanting me to put it for ages... in a waste collection skip.

Speaking of which, my new Mac server is working just as it should now - except for a forum I'm trying to run on it. The main forum page appears, but if you click on any forum or the login link it just refreshes the main forum list. I can't even get into the admin controls to change the settings! It's running IvB, not vBulletin, but maybe someone with extensive PHP and SQL experience would be able to see why the scripts aren't responding right.