Storage and RAID Troubleshooting Quiz

What are the RAID LED states

1. Solid green: Drive is powered and operating normally

2. Blinking green: Drive is actively reading, writing, or rebuilding data

3. Solid orange: Drive requires attention; pending failure

4. Solid red: Drive has failed or critical error

5. No LED: Drive is unpowered, missing, or not properly connected

What do grinding noises indicate in an HDD

Mechanical wear or damage

What do clicking noises indicate in an HDD

read/write head failures or electronic issues

What do you do when you hear HDD noises

Backup data and replace the drive

What actions would you take to troubleshoot not finding a bootable drive

1. Confirm the drive is visible within the system setup interface

2. Examine the physical connections and cables to the drive

3. Disconnect any removable external drives

4. Reconfigure the system to use the correct drive as the first boot option

Where can you adjust a misconfigured boot sequence

BIOS/UEFI settings

What proactive measure helps minimize data loss due to drive corruption

Scheduled full disk backups

What do you do when you realize that critical files in a RAID configuration are becoming corrupted and some data is missing to determine if drives are failing

Evaluate the storage devices’ self-monitoring diagnostic data for anomalies

What steps are best practices to address a RAID array that has failed

1. Access the RAID controller utility to review logs of events, errors, and drive status

2. Check power and data cables to ensure no drive appears failed due to a loose or disconnected cable

3. Verify the integrity of existing backups before attempting any repairs or rebuilds

4. Replace the faulty drive with a component of the same or greater capacity and compatible specifications

What RAID array does replacing one of the faulty drives not work

RAID 0

What is the tool that predicts and reports impending drive failures

S.M.A.R.T.

What should you do after receiving a S.M.A.R.T. failure prediction method

Backup data and replace he drive

What should you do first to resolve slower file transfer times on a system using a mechanical hard drive

Disk defragmentation

What metric plays a role in diagnosing declining performance of a storage drive

IOPS

What is the first troubleshooting step to take when an internal storage drive is not detected in the BIOS/UEFI or OS Disk Management

Inspect the drive’s power and data cable connections

What is a cause that a driver is not detected by the OS

Drive is disabled at the firmware level

What action should you take if a drive is missing in the OS but is in Disk Management as “Unallocated”

Initialize and format the drive

What is the most likely causes of a missing RAID array

1. Failed drive

2. Incorrect RAID controller settings

3. Disconnected or loose cable

What is the initial troubleshooting steps when a RAID array is missing from the system

1. Check for loose/disconnected cables or a poorly seated RAID controller card

2. Ensure the RAID controller is recognized and enabled in the BIOS/UEFI settings

What do audible alarms produced by the RAID array indicate

Drive failure or array degradation