Replacing failed drive

[David Nash]

We've got an old ML370G3 server with a RAID 5 array consisting of 3 drives.  One of the drives has failed.  We've tried reseating the drive, but it isn't working.

We've got 3 drives of the same model (same capacity and spin speed) which were in an array of a retired (different) server.  Is it safe to substitute one of these drives for the failed one?  I think if the drive is hot-plugged in place of the failed drive the array controller should know it's a replacement drive and start to rebuild the array to it.  I'm just wary in case it doesn't work, and if the replacement drive needs to be 'blank' rather than one taken from a different array.

Thanks!

[waaronb]

That should work fine. The array controller will see the "new" drive as a replacement for the failing one and rebuild onto it.

If you're at all unsure, this is a good time to make backups just in case. :)