Decoding the meaning of LED indicators on Dell Enterprise Physical Drives (PD) ?

T-Blog Editor/ April 4, 2020/ Datacenter Infrastructure News, How-Tos and Other Useful Tips and Tricks, Tekmart Enterprise Hardware Tips, WHY??: Explanations on data center hardware

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Raid Leds

Before you scratch your head out, note the meaning of the LED indicators on Dell Enterprise drives.

On hotswap drives, the backplane provides two LED indicators per drive that transmit light to the top of their respective caddies.

  • The light on the left is managed by the drive itself and indicates activity on the drive.
  • The indicator on the right is controller by the backplane in conjunction with the storage controller and is used to indicate drive status.

This article explains the differents states possible of the physical drive:

1 . physical disk activity indicator
2 . physical disk status indicator
4 . physical disk eject button
Drive-status indicator pattern (RAID only) Condition
Blinks green two times per second Identifying drive or preparing for removal.
Blinks green, amber, and turns off Predicted drive failure
Blinks amber four times per second Drive failed
Blinks green slowly Drive rebuilding
Steady green Drive online
Blinks green three seconds, amber three seconds,
and turns off six seconds		 Rebuild aborted
Off Ready for insertion/removal or not detected

Related posts:

  1. How to reset the BIOS of a Dell PowerEdge Server?
  2. How to identify Dell hard drive properties and update the firmware?
  3. How to replace a Failed Dell EqualLogic Controller
  4. Different types of memory DIMMS for Dell PowerEdge servers explained.
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