HP Proliant ML110 G4 Drive Swap

[Kenny Melton]

Hello Everyone:

I have the above server running Win Server 2003, with a RAID1 array consisting of 2 160GB SATA drives. The array was configured using the HP Embedded SATA Raid Controller utilities. I have a spare SATA 160GB drive. What I would like to know is what is the process for replacing one of the array drives with the spare?

Any and all information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Kenny

[KarloChacon]

hi Kenny

ok one of your HDD failed?
if you already determined that the HDD is dead

you just have to take the bad HDD out and replace with the new one *

you can do this if your HDDs are hot plug if not you need to shutdown your server to do this procedure

*** I was reading quickspecs about this server and I think you have non hot plug Hard Drives.

a component is hot plug (you can remove it when the server is online and there is redundancy of course) when it has like purple color in it.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/12577_div/12577_div.HTML

regards

[Kenny Melton]

Karlo,

Thank you very much for your quick reply, but no, the drives are not hot-swappable. I have attempted to replace the bad drive by just shutting down the server, replacing the drive, and booting back up. But when Windows starts to boot, the whole machine reboots. I went into the SATA Controller utilities and saw that the new drive was not recognized as part of the array, and could not add it to the array. After I formatted the drive with the SATA Controller utilities (which took many, many hours), I was able to create a "hotspare" out of it and re-build the array. I was just taking a shot in the dark, but it worked. However, I assume that there must be a better (more accurate?) procedure for swapping a bad array disk, because of the amount of time it took to format the disk -- 12-15 hours! This means the server is down for at least a workday.

Does the replacement drive need to be formatted first? I have been searching and searching for info on the proper procedure for swapping a drive in this server.

Thanks again,
Kenny

[KarloChacon]

ok

so the HDDs are non hot plug so you did the correct procedure a very good recommendation before replacing HDDs, adding hot spare, and other HDDs activities is to update the controller firmware to avoid many issues.

no you don't need to format a HDD when you replace it you just add the new HDD and the controller has to start the rebuilding process to add the new HDD to the existing RAID 1

but I know sometimes this procedure fails - old firmware, maybe other HDD failed corrupting the RAID level (for RAID 1 just one HDD can fail)

regards

[KarloChacon]

also

check this it is very good topic

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1081674

regards

[Jimmy Vance]

Two ways to do this, when a drive fails on this controller, you can shutdown the system and replace the failed drive, during POST go into the controller utility. You should be able to select the new drive as a spare and then make it part of the array. As you found out this method takes a long time for the drive to rebuild, before you can boot up into your OS.

The second way starts out the same, replace the drive, but don't go into the controller utility. let the system boot (not sure why yours wouldn't) then use the hrconf CLI utility to add the drive as a spare and move it into the array. The rebuild will take place in the background. I've done this on systems using this SATA controller with Linux as the OS.

For Windows there is a GUI program to manage the controller

http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/24806.html

and also the CLI utility for Windows

http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/24808.html