Host server windows server 2003 appliance edition – PV775N, Drive Chassis – PV220S has slot2 (1:2) that is reporting the 2 new drives as failed. Originally there were 2 drives in prefail on the PV220S cabinet, 1:1 & 1:2. I swapped 1:1 1st with a new drive (same model as used with 1:2) and that rebuilt just fine. After that was all healthy I pulled the 2nd prefail drive in 1:2 & popped in the new drive. First time I did so it showed unknown. I reseated it & it showed failed. Ordered a replacement for the replacement, but same unknown/failed issue. Now the array is "degraded". I was hoping to get this healthy before doing a migration or P2V of the nearly 1TB worth of data, but it doesnt seem to be in the cards. I know there is a firmware update for the raid controller, however it seems to be bad practice to update raid controller firmware unless the raid itself is healthy.
Is P2V of this Dell OEM windows server 2003 x86 appliance edition an option? I have VLK windows licensing to spare, but I just want to get this off the bad hardware in the short term, then put a plan together to migrate the files off this server to a 2012r2 file server.