Swapping Disks Out Temporarily

[Keith W]

I have a Proliant DL360 G4 which currently has 2 x 146GB 15k U320 disks on RAID 1.

I need to rebuild the OS but don't want to disturb the current OS.

My thought was to remove the 2 drives that are in it and put in 2 spare disks and build the new OS on them.

Not a problem so far.

However, if the new build takes longer than expected or hits problems, then I will need to reinstate the original OS by putting the 2 original disks back in.

My current 2 disks are 146GB 15k U320 but my spare 2 are 300GB 15k U320.

If I take out the 146GBs and put in the 300GBs, could I (if I needed to) then put the 146GBs back in and be back up and running with no problems?

[Peter Karle]

Hi Kieth,
no problem to perform this, since you deal with a SmartArray 5i controller!
Do the following:
1.) power down OS and power off the server.
2.) pull out both disks (remember the slots!)
3.) power on the server
4.) hit F8 to get into ORCA and delete the config on the SA5i
5.) Reboot server and see if any orphaned info (like missing disk in slot 1, or sth. else) is shown. If not, power off server.
6.) plug in the new disks and power on server.
7.) Install your OS through SmartStart CD or do it handish with first configuring your RAID

If you want to change to the former OS (which still resides on the two other disks) simply repeat steps 1 to 5. On step 6 you should care about plugging the disks in their original slots.

Regards, Peter

[Chris Rosan]

Keith,

I've actually done this on an ML370 G3 and it worked. I didn't have to play with the array card config however (i had a SA6402).

I just put the new disks in, made the array (it was 2 disks) then rebuild the server. The build took 3 weekends. 6pm friday i put the new disks, and 6pm sunday we went back to the old disks, 2 weeks in a row. The 3rd weekend we left the new drives in.

REMEMBER - if you run Windows on the servers and are on a domain, both "servers" (or sets of disks) HAVE to have different server names.

and YES - MAKE SURE you know which way the disks go in/came out on BOTH sets of disks. I used a whiteboard marker on the front of the disks (you can remove it later carefully with something like window cleaner).

[Kedd Guyton]

Pencil or sticky notes also are useful to temporarily label harddisks when out of the server.