Rebuild RAID 1

[ftenerelli]

I have 2 servers (Proliant G5 and Proliant G8) On the G5 server I had setup a Raid 1 array (is used with storage only purposes). Now, i want to take the 2 drives from the G5 server and put they on the G8, maintaining the mirror.

My question is if i setup RAID1 on the G8 (with G5 drives) wouldn't delete all data?

[RbBsmn]

G5 drives are not compatible in Gen8 servers as Gen8 hard drives are supposed to have Smart Carriers.

[ftenerelli]

That's not the question. I have previously buy the new carriers to adapt the HDDs on the Gen8 server. Actually the ACU displays Gen5 Mirrored HDDs as unassigned drives. I need that both HDDs be online. To use the in my W2012R2 Environment

[RbBsmn]

Putting on your own carriers do not make the hard drives supported for Gen8 and is not recommended. However if you do this I would check if the same models are actually used in Gen8 servers (with the Smart Carrier of course) and check on what firmware level they should be. I guess in theory they should work now, however this is obviously not supported and at your own risk.

When it comes to moving disk from one server to another without losing RAID information, this should be possible if you are using the same controller series.
Not 100% sure if they would have to be in the same bays as they were before.

[waaronb]

I've had success moving drives from a G5 (P400 controller) to G6 (P410 controller) and it would probably also move to a G7 (also a P410 controller).

Moving from the P400 to a P420 and also swapping the drive carriers, I'm not sure even I would bother doing that. Seems easy enough to just buy new drives and clone the data.

The Gen8 series have something built in to detect non-HP drives and will bug you about it during POST and log warnings in the IML. Although you're probably moving genuine HP drives, I wonder if the Gen8 sees it the same way.

Also, the RAID information stored on the disks (there's a little reserved section where the controller writes info about the drive's membership in any arrays and it's physical location in the server), I wonder if that is compatible from the P400 to the P420.

If the drives show up okay but it says they're unassigned, that meant the system sees them, but it didn't see that hidden array configuration info on the drives.

Or it meant you plugged the drives in one at a time while the system was running, in which case it doesn't really pick up that info. I only move drives from one system to another with the system powered off, if I want to keep the array configuration intact.