Dear All,

need your help our Mark V HMI PC HDD failed and cannot reboot. It has 2 HDD with RAID1 configuration. Status is Degraded.

Physical disk Port 0 status error occurred (0) and port 2 status member disk (0) is green. Don't know what it's mean but I assumed that 2nd HDD is still healthy. Change the HDD with new unit and reboot but failed it's got error SATA cable error. Please advice what to do next. We got back-up with acronis.

regard
William

 

William ananymous,

You should not need the Acronis back-up unless something is done to corrupt or delete the data on the good hard drive--at least that's what I remember from the situation I observed a couple of years ago. It's my understanding that the purpose of the RAID configuration provided with newer GE Mark V HMIs that they can survive the failure of one hard drive and the RAID controller can rebuild a new hard drive when it's properly installed and configured.

Obtain the services of someone who's familiar with personal computer hardware and RAID configurations. If you replaced the failed hard drive with another and received some cable error, then something wasn't done correctly. There are different kinds of SATA (SATA I, SATA II, and SATA III). Sometimes, newer SATA drives have a jumper that must be set to allow them to be used on older PCs with older SATA configurations.

I don't know if that's the problem, but it should help.

Once you have replaced the hard drive and gotten it to be recognized by the PC, it should be possible to have the RAID controller "repair" (I think that's the term) the configuration; the correct term might be "rebuild". I think that's done by the RAID controller copying the information from the good drive to the bad drive so the two will be images of each other.

I may be using the wrong terms; I've only seen this done once a couple of years ago and it was done by an outside contractor who was very knowledgeable in PC hardware and configurations. It took several hours for the entire procedure, during which time the HMI was unavailable for use to control and monitor the turbine. But once it was finished, all was fine.

If you're not comfortable reading the instructions for installing a new hard drive and configuring it work with the PC's hardware and then reading the instructions for the RAID controller to repair or rebuild the newly installed hard drive, obtain the services of someone who is. It will go much faster and with less likelihood of data loss or damage.

 

It sounds like we have a similar setup, and we have restored our HMI's using the software. The software on our HMI's is called Matrix Storage Console.

The good hard drive must be plugged into port 0 and the brand new hard drive plugged into port 2. I think the computer will then reboot and you can go into the console and build the new hard drive. We have a procedure we made up for this and I can send it to you if you give your email address.

Also the new hard drive must be the same size or larger than the other hard drive and not have anything on it or be completely formatted.

 

> The good hard drive must be plugged into port 0 and the brand new hard drive
> plugged into port 2....

Oh dear.....

This is the sort of well-intentioned but Really Bad Advice that could get someone into REAL trouble.

CSA's Description of the fix is pretty accurate. Firstly DO NOT TOUCH THE RAID CONFIGURATION UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE OF THE ERROR. Secondly, take Another backup if you can. Finally, the correct action is to replace the failed disk. You must identify the correct disk to replace as it may be Either Disk 0 or Disk 1. If you are even slightly unsure get someone who knows what they are doing on-site ASAP because there is a very good chance that you could loose the working disk as well if you make a mistake. Fortunately you say you have an Acronis backup. This is good as you still have some chance of recovering if a mistake is made when trying to repair the RAID disks.

 

Actually, if you read the posters original message, the hard drives are plugged into port 0 and 2, not 0 and 1. The good hard drive 'that has not failed' must be plugged into port 0 for the computer to reboot, so if the failed hard drive is on port 0 you must switch the cables so the brand new hard drive is on port 2 and the still functional hard drive is on port 0. We have done this on more than one occasion with success. We have actually used the software to make completely functioning backups of all of our HMI's, so when one fails we can just swap the arcnet card and install the dongle and it will go. It's not rocket science, the Raid software walks you through the process, and there is a help feature in the software. If your not comfortable with computers it probably would be worth it to have a computer guru on site, although there is not guarantee he/she has used that exact RAID software.

You are correct in saying the first thing to do is make sure he has a complete acronis backup, although he already said he had that.

 

Mpac,

Is the dongle for CIMPLICITY (Proficy), or for TCI?

 

May I get procedure, Please.

thanks
my email is dron502 at yahoo dot com

 

CSA,

I believe the dongle is for TCI as only the Servers have dongles, Viewers do not. But I'm not 100% positive. I did try one without dongle once but cannot recall the error I received.

 

May I get a copy of the procedure Please.

thanks
my email is [email protected]

 

May I get a copy of the procedure. Kindly mail to the below mail id:

Email id- [email protected]

 

Dear All,

Sorry not updating this, we get the GE TA to help us but unfortunately they failed to solved the problem and now waiting for their quotation to supply the new HMI. I think this gonna be a bit expensive since they said we cannot use our existing license as it was for Win XP and they will supply us with Win 7 PC.

Dear MPAC can you email me the procedure, send to [email protected]

thanks in advance

Regards
William.

 

I would like to suggest that you get the OEM of the HMI workstation (i.e. Dell or HP or etc) to check up the HMI as this is just a hardware problem in my opinion. Once the hardware issue is settled, you could just reinstall the HMI software using the CD provided. The installation is not "that difficult" provided you are familiar with Norton Ghost application. You could get a GE TA to assist as well.

I had some HDD problem with my HMI some time back (but mine is without RAID) and the problem was solved by the DELL guy

Upgrading to newer HMI didn't solve the root cause of the problem right? Although I must say that the new Cimp 6 on Wind 7 is really sexy

 

Others havesaid the same thing earlier in this thread: This is NOT a GE Workstation ST problem; it's a personal computer hardware problem.

Others have also said: If the failed hard disk is properly replaced (it may be necessary to make the good hard disk the "primary" hard disk if it's not already,) the provided RAID software will rebuild the new hard disk in the image of the good hard disk. No back-up CDs/DVDs required. No reload of any software from removable media. That's the whole purpose of RAID disks in the provided configuration: to allow continued operation for a brief period until a failed hard disk can be replaced, and once it's replaced the new hard disk can be "built" using the information from the good hard disk.

But, if you want to spend a lot of money for "sexy", GE will certainly relieve you of a lot of money for that privilege.

And, as sd says: A new GE WorkstationST HMI will NOT solve the original problem: the failed hard disk in the existing PC.

 

> Others havesaid the same thing earlier in this thread: This is NOT a GE
> Workstation ST problem; it's a personal computer hardware problem.

I totally agree with CSA. Again. And, as for the dongle, if this HMI has CIMPLICITY 7.5 or newer, it has two dongles, one for CIMPLICITY and one for the GE Energy stuff. The CIMPLICITY dongle is likely to be inside the CPU case. If it is an older system CIMPLICITY 6.1), it will have one dongle for TCI and a soft license for CIMPLICITY. If you remove the TCI dongle, TCI deposits a message in TCI.log and just stops working.

 

We have the same problem with our Mark 5 HMI HDD. Kindly send the procedure on how to configure the HDD as RAID1.

Best Regards,
Mohand