Rebuilding Hot Swappable Drives

[Ayman Altounji]

I have 2 X 18GB drives mirrored (using the smart array controller). Win2K is installed and running. To test drive replacement I ejected (while the server was running) one of the drives. Server kept on running fine. I wrote to a file and saved it. Then inserted the drive back in. The lights on the newly inserted drive blinked for a few seconds and then went to amber. The lights on the other drive (that wasn't ejected) blinked for a few minutes and then went to amber. Now they are both amber (it's been 1 hour) and Win2K is frozen and I don't see any activity on the drives (no blinking lights - just the amber light on both drives). Am I missing something? Shouldn't this have just worked? Do I just need to be patient and it will eventually come back?

Thanks, Jay

[Mark Cloutier]

The only time you should remove a hard drive is when it's amber or red. Once this is done the Smart Array controller has marked this as bad and will not write to it. If you pull a hard drive while it's being written to, you can loose the entire array. Your best bet is to shut down the server and then remove one drive. Run the Array configuration utility or the array diagnostic utility so it can update itself.