RAID1 with two disks, howto replace one of them ?

[Kimmo Glaborg]

I have a DL380 G4 with a two disk raid1 mirror on a smart array 6i controller. Now we just found out that our supplier put in one Ultra3 by mistake instead of a Ultra 320 disks, and we now got the replacement. Is it just to shut down the server and replace to the new disk or do I need to consider anthing when doing this ?

[Markus Dittrich]

its easy, replace the Ultra3 drive and wait until the array is rebuilded. thats all. you don´t need to shut down or reboot the system

[Akos Hegedus]

You have to power off the server, pull out the wrong disk. Then switch on, fail the missing drive and hot-plug the new one. I prefer to stop booting the OS or disconnect from network for faster regenerating the RAID.

[HGN]

Hi

When the drive is replaced and the server is poweredon the array will rebuild, it is better to take off the network so that is might be a little faster.

Rgds

HGN

[TwoProc]

I've done it both ways hot and cold swaps. Hot is very reliable, and I've never had trouble with it. Cold swaps are a bit more trouble, and you MUST answer the questions correctly. Read the prompts carefully if you're going to do the cold boot/swap. Also, when the system asks you to do option 1) or option 2) on the reboot, and it's counting down the seconds too quickly, and you've not read/thought about which choice long enough - JUST HIT SPACE BAR to finish reading and stop the countdown timer...

But, I cast my vote for hot swap on that thing.

Caveat Emptor - *always* have a good backup first.