Section 23 OBJ 5.3: Troubleshooting Storage Devices Flashcards
Boot issues relating to storage
If the system cannot find a bootable device, it will cause an error
Ways to solve: Go into UEFI/BIOS to find the boot order and fix any issues if found
Check if the internal storage device is actually working by looking, listening and feeling.
1. Drive activity LED should blink if SSD/HDD is working
2. Listen for HDD spinning
3. Feel vibrations from HDD spinning
Storage Device Issues
Clicking and grinding sounds are a sign of imminent mechanical drive (HDD) failure.
Backup the drive ASAP
If the activity light is not blinking, it could be an issue with the device, power, or connections
If the light is constantly blinking, it means there’s an abnormal amount of activity. Could be caused by insufficient RAM, causing overuse of the page file.
Another issue is the storage device not showing up in the file explorer. Use disk management tools to see if the device is not being detected
If a read/write operation fails, this could be due to bad sectors on a HDD or bad platters on a SSD. Use a disk utility to find which sectors are bad and try to recover them.
Drive Performance Issues
Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART): Self diagnostic program that alerts the OS if there is a failure or soon to be. It monitors the drive and understands the health status of it.
Key metric for performance is input/output operations per second (IOPS)
Low IOPS can be an issue with the hardware or software.
If using a HDD, use the defragmentation tool.
Issues with RAIDS
Single Disk Failure:
If a drive in a RAID fails, you can use the RAID rebuild utility to rebuild the raid with a new drive.
Full RAID Failure:
If the entire array or volume fails
Hardware based RAID: the raid controller card may have failed
Software based RAID: misconfiguration doesn’t know how to use the RAID
Multiple drives fail: There is not enough data to read data from the RAID. Restore from backup, reconfigure, and rebuild the raid
