Server start up failure/HP Proliant ML150

[willie2035]

I have limited tech knowledge and want to check on our IT company who have given me a huge bill.

We have Windows Small Business Server 2003 Standard Edition, on an old HP ML150 server

After a holiday period where our back up tapes were not changed for 3 weeks, we returned to find that the tape which backs up in the middle of the night, was ejecting, implying back up was incomplete.Each day after we returned from the holidays, the tape continued to eject overnight. We asked our IT company to investigate, as prior to the holiday period, there were no problems with the back up.They initially indicated that there was a problem with a large number of ' log files'. They did some checking and said that the back up process was also very very slow. After several days, they said that they would insert a USB2 card to the server to speed up the process. I watched as the technician inserted the card, and restarted the server. A message on the screen indicated that the card was incompatible.This is what the technician told me.

Unfortunately I don't have the specifics of this message. The technician removed the card,and attempted a restart. The server failed to restart. The IT company took the server away over a 2 day period and it restarted again perfectly.I have details of the work they performed in order to get the server operating again, if this is helpful.

They have indicated that the incompatible card installation was not a factor in the failure of the server to restart, and that they are confident the restart failure was due to a ' bad block on one of the hard drives' They also have said that it was likely the issue would have ocurred, regardless of whether they had done any work on the server or not.

Does anyone have an opinion on my situation, with reasons please

[ACheeseDanish]

Hmm. It sounds like the card being incompatible could have caused the server to fail. And, it is also their [IT] fault for not knowing what was compatible with your server and what was not.

To check your drives on the server yourself, use this: http://www.hdtune.com/download.html If you want to pay for it fine; but the free version works great. You can do quick and extended scans on your hard drives to see if there are bad "blocks".

[willie2035]

Thanks for yr opinion. Out IT company stated that you if incompatible card installed, you should be able to deinstall and restart without new card normally, and are indicating to me that '' old'' server is the issue - '' most probably !''

Would there be a log showing the message that appeared on the screen, or might this have disappeared when the system crashed

[ACheeseDanish]

Yes, it is called Event Viewer. Can't remember the location of it. I think it might be in System Tools.