How to remove a drive from RAID 5 permanately

[EttieneS]

My client has a ML350G3 with 5x72Gb disks and 1x300Gb disk in RAID 5, the 300GB disk has been added to the Array and is only seen as 72GB. The drive has not been added to logicgal drive yet.Is there any way i can remove thid drive from the RAID?

[Uwe Zessin]

When a new disk drive is added to a disk drive array, the data from existing logical drives is automatically redistributed over all disk drives.

You do need to backup all data, destroy all logical disks and then recreate the configuration without the 300GB disk. The SmartArray controllers cannot 'empty' a disk drive that is a member of a drive array.

[Prashant Pachauri]

Another workaround which can save you lot of time in backing up and restoring all data is remove the 300GB HDD in hotplug, the RAID5 will goto "degraded" status but will still be functional. Then add another 72GB HDD, this will start the rebuilding process and in a few hours RAID will be fine again.