SCSI Hard Disk Replacement

[TL Verdone]

I have had a HD failure on a CPQ ML350G3, Novell6 Sp5 file server, with a SA532 in RAID5 with(3)36.5GB drives. We will be cycling this server out within the next year for a migration to WS SBS. I need it to last at least another 6-9 months, and don't really want to spend too much effort or funds keeping it alive.

Since storage is getting tight (70% of capacity), I'd like to upgrade the HD's to 72GB's. Can I just insert the new drives one at a time and let the recovery utility rebuild them one-by-one? Or are any other actions required if the firmware revision matches on all the new drives? (I've ordered identical drives before that FW did not match)

Thanks for your help and guidance...

[Víctor Cespón]

Upgrading Smart Array and disks firmware is always a good idea, you can do it offline with Firmware Maintenance CD.
You can replace the disks one by one, letting the RAID rebuild each time. This will expand the RAID, and later you can extend the logical unit.
This will make the disk the OS sees bigger, but will not change the partitions or filesystems. You'll have 72 GB free, where you can create a new partition or make the existing one bigger, if the OS allows it.

[Venilton Junior]

In the theory, it will work fine!

But, first of all, make a fully and an incremental backup of your files. :P

Try to use the lastest revision of firmware for the SmartArray and disks. As said above, try to use the firmware maintenance CD, as example 7.91.

It's very usefull to use the ACU and check that the controller isn't rebuilding to change disks.

Luck

Regards