RAID 5 replacement disk

[Joe Krupiak_1]

This is my first experience with RAID. If I have a disk failure (3 drive RAID setup) in RAID 5 under W2k and buy a replacement drive, does the dirve have to be formatted as NTFS first or will it rebuild itself without the formatting?

Thanks,
Joe

[Mike Naime]

Without knowing your hardware config, it is hard to be 100% positive. With the larger Compaq/HP raid controllers (HSG/EVA/MSA), a spareset drive will automatically fail into the place of the failed drive in a mirror or raid and start rebuilding reguardless of the OS that is using the storage set.

[Joe Krupiak_1]

Thanks, It's am ML350 with 3 9.1GB drives in an ARRAY 5 config with an L2 ARRAY controller.

I just received the replacement 9.1GB drive and I am going to the client today to swap out the failed drive.

Are there any boot utilities that HP/COMPAQ has available for download. The client bought the servers used and has nothing. No Smartstart or anything.

-Joe

[FrankJan Franken]

We've got a 5 drive RAID 5 config. When a drive fails, just pull it out ( I assume it is hotswap ) and replace it with a new one. The disk will be automatically rebuild. No pre-formatting is necessary.
Since RAID5 is a hardware controlled way of disk protection, the disk will be build up by writing al missing blocks in the RAID 5 config directly to disk. If the system is a heavily used system, user can experience a performance degrade when rebuilding. But, hey, safety for all