I'm struggling to find information on a common issue with Dell PowerEdge RAID Controllers. When you put a non-certified drive in the server, the HDD activity light behaves oddly and works in reverse. I know there's a command that can correct this behavior or let the system ignore the non-certified drive so everything returns to normal. I've used this fix before on older machines, but I can't seem to find any reliable info about it online anymore. Can anyone help me out with this? Any notes or insights would be appreciated!
3 Answers
I think I found the command you're looking for! It's `sdparm --set=RLM --save /dev/sdX`. Just remember to replace 'X' with the specific drive letter you're using. It works for most RAID controllers that are Marvell based. Such a shame this info is hard to find these days!
Also, check out some related links for more details: there’s a comprehensive guide at [this URL](https://sg.danny.cz/sg/sdparm.html)!
It's frustrating how much information just seems to vanish from the internet. Now, it feels like search engines are full of AI-generated nonsense that doesn't help at all. Anyone else feel nostalgic for decent search engines like AltaVista?
For sure! I started using DuckDuckGo lately, which lets you turn off the AI suggestions, and it’s been pretty refreshing.
I prefer Kagi. It does cost a bit, but at least I feel like my privacy is respected, and I get better search results!
I haven't paid much attention to the activity lights, but there's a setting in the `stsvc.ini` file that you can tweak to prevent OMSA from warning about non-certified drives. You can find more on forums like this [one](https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/poweredge-hddscsiraid/dell-openmanage-storage-status-non-critical/647fa101f4ccf8a8de62a7a9).
That's good to know! I was aware of the OMSA workaround, but I didn’t realize there was one specifically for the activity lights.
That's definitely useful! Just a heads-up to everyone using this—make sure you're looking into which model of RAID card you have, since different models can behave differently with this command.