I haven't been able to find anywhere in the MSA2040 SMU/ GUI a facility to let me spindown a hard disk that is part of an existing array so another disk can be spunup and brought in to take over from it. The documentation just says remove the drive and rely on the hotplug to work, but that means physically jolting an active 15k drive without parking the heads. That may be fine if the drive being removed is faulty, but if it isn't, why subject it to potentially dangerous physical shock. Every RAID controller I have in my servers has the ability to take an active drive offline indeed one competitor makes a point of recommending that hotplug drives are not pulled until the drive has spundown and the drive cradle LED's change pattern to indicate when it is safe to remove the drive which seems to happen about 30 seconds after the software disable is selected. If I want to swap a faulty drive, the moment I pull it, a global spare will kick in but when I get a replacement, I want to return it to the slot of the removed drive so the known layout of drives per RAID set is restored so the newly added disk will go back to being a standby but pulling it while it is going will subject it to shock. Does anyone know a way to shutdown a single disk and take if offline via the GUI? Surely others have pondered the same thing or have IT people become detached from the engineering physics of a head floating on an air buffer microns above a disk spinning at dizzying rates and don't care if a good drive is trashed for nothing?
