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Changing hard drive in SCSI RAID array

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by jlbpotter

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I have a Compaq Proliant 1600 NT 4.0 server that has 3 Ultra-wide SCSI hard drives configured in a RAID 5 array. One of my hard drives is failing so I am replacing it. Even though the drives are hot swappable I am going to shut the server down when I change out the hdd. My question is when I boot the server will RAID see it and restore data to it by itself or will I need to boot it up and then format the new drive and then have RAID restore the data?

4 replies

by cavedweller

The RAID controller is supposed to initialize the new drive and then restore RAID operations by rebuilding the missing data on the new disk. Until the initialization is complete the RAID does not provide any data protection through redundancy so you might want to keep the server offline until the disk initialization finishes.

The RAID was designed to swap out and restore a single failed disk while online, however. This method would be used on a high-availability server.

by jlbpotter

Will I need to format the new drive before RAID can restore to it or will RAID do that for me?

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