Popping drives regularly on RAID1

[Stix]

Hi

We'd like to pop a drive on our rack and blade servers that have RAID1 before installing Windows updates every month so we have a quick and easy rollback if something goes haywire.

What are the ramifications of pulling and inserting a drive every month on servers? Does it cause any hardware issues?

[gregersenj]

I don't think it should caurse hardware problems.

But I believe you must power down the server, when to pull the drive, or you might end up with a corrupt "backup" drive.

And if you have to roll back, take care to know how the smart aray controller behave!

1. The controller/RAID must be in interim recovery mode, for the controller to start rebuilding automatically. This is default setting if you boot the machine with 1 drive only (In case of mirror).

2. When a RAID got a missing drive. The RAID controller expect a replacement drive to be correct position.

3. If you install 2 drives, that is not at the same time/date of usage. It will rebuild from the latest to the oldest.
The most recent is considered to be the valid copy.

Also. Before you do this. Do check that the ID's of the drives are correct.
Problems has been seen, with drives that got a wrong ID. And when it was replaced it wouldn't rebuild, sice the controller was waiting for a new drive at another ID.

BR
/jag