Hot Swap HDs in ML530 and increasing capacity

[tim_357]

Hi guys, i have a few questions about hot swapping hard drives in my ML530.

basically i have several servers all with the same configuration, they have 2 x 9.1Gb drives (raid 2) and 5 x 18.2Gb Drives (raid 5)

i have two things i need to achive,

firstly on one server a dreaded red light has appeared on one of the 9.1's do i literally pull the drive out and put a new one in? does it need to be formatted and do i do it with Windows 2003 running or while the machine is off?
if i stick an 18.2Gb drive in rather than a 9.1 will it cause any problems? or will it just run with 9.1Gb usable and be quite happy?

and secondly i want to add a 9.1Gb drive to the raid2 setup to push the usable up to 18Gb, how do i go about doing this? again can i use 18.2gb drives to act as 9.1s?

9.1Gb drives are harder to acquire than 18.2s

Thanks in advance for any help

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Tim,

This depends on whether you are using an Array Controller. I guess you probably are, but it shouldn't be assumed as the ML530 doesn't come with one as standard.

If you do have an Array Controller, then yes just pull out the drive, with the server running, and insert the new one. The controller should work out what's going on, and start rebuilding the array.

Yes you can use an 18GB drive in place of a 9GB drive. However unless you play with the configuration to expand the array you'll only be able to use 9GB. How you do this depends on the controller.

Cheers,

Rob

P.S. There's no such thing as raid2. You probably mean RAID-1 - two drives which are mirrored.

[tim_357]

hi thanks for your answer, i have a compaq smart array 3200 controller

does the new drive need to be formated or will it just overwrite?

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi,

No the drive does not need to be formatted. Just plug it in...

Cheers,

Rob