Handling Foreign State Drives in MSM
I. Steps for Handling Foreign Status on a Newly Replaced Hard Drive
When the new hard drive status is (Foreign) Unconfigured Good, clear the Foreign Configuration of the hard drive. Then set the hard drive as a hot spare.
- Clear Foreign Configuration:
Right-click the RAID controller, select Scan Foreign Configuration to scan for Foreign configurations.
A prompt appears: 1 Foreign Drives were detected…
Then select Clear: remove logical configuration from all foreign drives, and click OK.
In the next prompt, check Confirm to confirm, click Yes to delete the foreign configuration.
The hard drive will change to Unconfigured Good status.
- Set as Spare or Replace Missing Hard Drive:
Choose one of the following two scenarios:
RAID Group has no Missing Hard Drives: Right-click the hard drive, then select Assign Global Hot Spare to set the hard drive as a global hot spare.
RAID Group has Missing Hard Drives: Right-click the hard drive, then select Replace Missing Drive to replace the missing drive with the hard drive.
Right-click the RAID group, select Show Progress to view the current RAID group rebuild progress.
II. Accidentally unplugged and reinserted hard drive, causing it to be used as a new hard drive.
MegaRAID Storage Manager shows Slot 6 hard drive as Foreign Unconfigured Bad.
Note: Generally, Unconfigured Bad indicates a failed drive. However, if this status was caused by accidental unplugging, the hard drive can still be used as a new drive.
If only one hard drive in the RAID group was accidentally unplugged and reinserted and the RAID group status is Degraded, follow the menu below to set the hard drive to Good, then proceed with Part I of this document to clear Foreign information and replace the Missing hard drive.
