I noticed some beeping sound coming from my server today. After I opened the server case, I found that the problem came from my newly install HighPoint RocketRAID card. During the beep, the server could not operate normally. First, the system dumped some error messages, and followed by core dump, and the computer ended up rebooting by itself. After the system was restarted, during the first few seconds, the system was doing fine. After waiting for couple minutes, the error happened again. So I know that it was not some random error, and it was repeatable.
Here are my step-by-step guide on how to solve this problem:
Beeping doesn’t mean defective
After reading the manual, I found that beeping is part of the monitoring process. If the card detects any failure in the RAID system, it will start beeping. If you have any doubt, try to run the card on a different machine. That’s the best way to verify whether the card is defective or not.
Did you make any change to the system recently
Making a system stable is not easy, because you don’t know whether the hardware are conflicting with each other, or the newly installed module will cause the system unstable or not. For example, I found that the beeping happened after I enabled the Linux Emulation module in FreeBSD. After I turned that off, things are working fine.
Are the cables securely attached?
SATA harddrive pretty much is the standard today. It is fast and doesn’t take up lots of space. However, unlike the old IDE cable, it is very easy to get loosen. After I unplugged all the attached SATA cables from the RAID card, and put them back afterward, the problem seemed gone.
Flash the firmware
Although this is not likely, but the problem can sometimes caused by an out-dated firmware. (I have experience a similar thing on my motherboard before). Try to flash the card with the latest firmware.
If none of these methods work for you, sounds like your card is defective.
–Derrick
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