HDD replacement in RAID-1

[Aminur]

I have a ProLiant DL20 Gen10 with 2 SATA (1TB each) hard drives configured as raid 1, Controller is HPE Smart Array E208i-a SR Gen10. One drive is in a failed (degraded) state what is the procedure to replace it? Do I just remove the failed drive and insert the new one?

[TVVJ · Accepted solution]

Hello,

As you have mentioned that one hard drive of the array with RAID 1  configured is defective, you may remove the defective drive and insert a replacement.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise always recommends that you take valid backup of data always, especially before performing any changes to the storage sub-system.

Ensure that the replacement hard drive has the same spare part number as that of the one being replaced so that the same capacity and type of hard drive is used.

Mixing types of drives is not allowed within an array. For example, if the drives in the array are SAS, you cannot make install a SATA drive for one of the drives and expect it to be rebuilt.

Regards,

[Tam92]

Hello,

RAID 1 has a fault tolerance of 1 drive, so you can go ahead and replace the faulty drive and should not encounter any issues. 

RAID 1 has the following benefits:

• It is useful when high performance and data protection are more important than usable capacity.

• This method has the highest write performance of any fault-tolerant configuration.
• No data is lost when a drive fails, as long as no failed drive is mirrored to another failed drive.
• Up to half of the physical drives in the array can fail.

As stated in the last comment, a valid backup should be taken before performing any operation with the storage sub-system.

Thanks,

TAM