Updating thread for our forum followers. Original poster found that the replacement drive used was indeed bad. He is replacing it later with a good drive and will proceed with updating the server accordingly.  
Hello, I have posted this same message under the Disk Drives forum, then I realized there is a specific forum for Server HDDs so I am copying it here. We have a Poweredge 2900 with 2x500Gb HDs on RAID-1. One of the disks failed and we have replaced it with an identical disk as the one working fine (same brand, Seagate model number, etc.), though without a Dell PN. After replacing it, the controller has started to rebuild the RAID but it shows "Predicted Failure=Yes" for this new drive. The disk is currently still under rebuild. One thing to notice is that apparently the Perc firmware is outdated. OpenManage shows that the current Perc 6/i firmware version is 6.0.2-0002, and the minimum required firmware version is 6.2.0-0012. If I go to the Dell support site and enter the server's service tag it shows me an available download for the Perc firmware with version 6.3.3-0002. So the questions are:- Is it usually ok to use non-Dell certified drives if they are the same brand and model as the other disk? - How could I determine the source for the Predicted Failure warning? - Could this have something to do with the outdated Perc firmware? Are there any risks associated with upgrading the Perc firmware? Many thanks in advance for your help! --Julio.
Poweredge 2900 showing Predicted Failure after replacing drive