DL-380 Smart Array 5i Plus - single drive array replacement

[Marcus Riley]

If i have a single drive array and an exact copy of the drive, do I have to power down the machine to replace it or can this be done on-the-fly?

[Vijay_44]

Never pull out a live drive

[Colin_29 · Accepted solution]

The quick answer is "Yes, you should power the machine down".

Unless you are utilizing data guarding, the system will no longer be able to see a drive and will die.

Hot plug drives are designed to be "hot plugged" so under the conditions I described above, you may pull a spinning disk. You should however only do this with ones that have failed, the reason being that withe lateral movement you can get bearing and possibly head damage.

There was a rumour several years back that Compaq looked at the diagnostic data on each failed drive that was returned to them and if the number of hot plugs exceeded three, they would not replace it under warranty.

I know that some people swap half of a mirror pair on a regular basis to keep an on the shelf quick method of recovery. This will work 99 times out of 100. Yours will be the unluck one.

Hope this helps

Colin