swapping Drives with Smart Array 2SL

[Ayman Altounji]

Hi,
I have an NT 4.0 server with 3 4Gb drives in a RAID 5 Array with a SMART 2SL controller.

I'm going to replace these drives with larger disks, and my question is, if something should go wrong and I remove the new drives, can I put the disks back and will they "remember" their original configuration ?
Or will I have to rebuild the array and restore.

Just trying to make sure I have all my bases covered.
-Jim

[Mark Cloutier]

are you planning on yanking all the drives at once and then adding the new ones and reinstalling the OS? or are you looking to migrate to the larger drives by popping one out at a time and letting the array rebuild? if you are yanking all the drives then at a later date if you wanted to put them back in (in the same order) they should come back up with the old data...if you are migrating though the array will not be able to take the old drives back once you have replaced one of the drives with one of the larger ones..note however that the 2sl does not support drive extension so if you use the pop and replace method then you will end up with an array the same size as the original and disk administrator would show the extra space as unused space ...it wont be available for the array..so your best bet is to take out the drives (all of them with the power off) and then put in the new drives and reinstall all software..then if there are issues you can put the old drives back in