Trying to replace a bad drive with RAID5 setup

[pianoman72]

I have an Avid MediaRAID 8 with 5 160GB maxtor drives. I have it setup in RAID5 with auto recovery.

the mediaRaid 8 is a SCSI - IDE drive array that is rack mounted and has an LCD panel on it which tells the status of the drives.

Here's what happened:

LCD panel shows a bad block on drive 1, so I try to contact Avid for a warranty replacement, but I'm out of warranty and it is $90 just to talk to someone on the phone.

So I take the AVID hot-swappable drive bay out and get the model number for the Maxtor drive and order another one. Exact same model, brand and capacity.

I replace the drive inside the bay and slide it back in. It starts auto recovery - makes it to 100% with no errors.

Now that it has finished it tells me that drive1 is "invalid" or "not supported by Avid."

I thought maybe the system would format the drive for me during recovery but I guess not.

I think all of my data is still there on the 4 drives, but my drive speed is going to be reduced now that I am technically missing a drive.

I still have the old drive with the bad block.

What should my next move be?

I could try to copy the old drive onto the new? Or maybe I can just see how the old drive was formatted and use a program to format it?

It's the same drive - there has to be a way to get it to work.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[glc]

http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/thread/68510.aspx

The Maxtor drives do not have Avid Firmware. Theoretically one can load Avid Firmware from within Avid Storage Manager, however, since the drives are not Avid drives, the Maxtor drives may not be recognized in ASM.

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Doesn't look very promising unless you can get the Avid firmware loaded on the new drive.

[pianoman72]

Thanks for the link.

Ah, I see where it says "maxtor" instead of "avid." Is it possible to copy firmware from one drive to another?

[glc]

I have no idea. You may want to register over there and post.

[pianoman72]

Oh, I am registered over there but I just think the people here are much more knowledegable and helpful. I will try the Avid Storage Utility program and post up what happens. If I can trick it into "updating" the firmware on the drive...