topic replace a disk on smartarray in Disk Enclosures

replace a disk on smartarray

Mangin_1 — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:21:46 GMT

Hi,

I'd like to upgrade my disks on a smartarray 5i controller, whith bigger disks.
I'm in RAID 5.

If I remove a disk (hot remove) wich is safe and replace with a bigger one, the controller will rebuild the data.
Is the remove disk always usable after a hot remove or will be marked as a faulty disk ?

If it's faulty, I heard about an option in the controller settings to clear the "fault" ?
Is it right ?

Any idea ?

Re: replace a disk on smartarray

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:27:56 GMT

The replacement disk should be fine after the rebuild.

I don't recall about the SmartArrays, but I know about Mylex controllers where you can set a failed disk to 'OPTimal'. This can be a VERY dangerous thing, because the controller immediately stops with the rebuild.

I know of at least one customer who did this and caused bad inconsistencies to his system disk! We had to re-install the operating system.

Re: replace a disk on smartarray

Mahesh Kumar Malik — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:31:09 GMT

Hi Mangin

You can hot remove disks one by one and insert bigger capacity drives one by one. Once all new disks are in, run ACU utility either to incrase existing logical drives size or create additional logical drives.

Removed disks will NOT be marked as faulty disks, you may still use them

Not sure on clearing the fault flag. Explore ACU

Regards
Mahesh

Re: replace a disk on smartarray

Uwe Zessin — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 08:47:26 GMT

Still, the removed disk need to be treated with a bit of care, because it still has SmartArray meta-data on it. The disk should not be plugged into a SmartArray-based controller while it is powered down.

When the controller starts again, it can get confused by inconsitent meta data and load it from the 'wrong' disk - happened to me and a colleague. He swapped disks during power off and after starting the system, this killed one of my disks :-(