Reinserted a RAID disk. Defined as foreign. Is import or clear the correct choice?

Posted by Petrus on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Petrus
Published on 2013-11-04T07:24:47Z Indexed on 2013/11/04 9:59 UTC
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I have re-inserted a RAID disk, on a DELL server with Windows Server 2008. The drive-status indicator was changing between a green and amber light, and the monitor gave the following message:

There are offline or missing virtual drives with preserved cache. Please check the cables and ensure that all drives are present. Press any key to enter the configuration utility.

I pressed a key and the PERC 6/I Integrated BIOS Configuration Utility showed that the RAID Status for that disk was Offline.

After reinsertion of the disk the monitor is giving the following message:

Foreign configuration(s) found on adapter. Press any key to continue or ‘C’ load the configuration utility, or press ‘F’ to import foreign configuration(s) and continue.

After checking around on the net I am uncertain if I should choose import or clear. I cannot find out if an import means importing information from the array/system to the now foreign disk or the other way, i.e. importing information from the foreign disk to the array/system that was actually working fine. Also; if clear is a necessary thing to do ahead of a rebuild of that disk, or if clear means to clear the system to somehow make it ready to import the information from the foreign disk to the array/system, which is not what I want. I imagine that making the wrong choice here might be fatal.

Please help clearing this out by telling what to choose and why.

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