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Assign non-blank hot spare
I have an out of warranty server that needs to keep running a while longer. It has a perc4edi controller. I had a drive failure and the hot spare took over....everything fine.
I now want to add a drive to the server as the new hot spare, but this drive is from another server and still has data on it. I could take the server down and format the drive via the controller interface, but I wondered if it really mattered if the drive was blank or not. In other words, if the drive has to become part of the array at some point, does it have to be blank?
Thanks!
Dev Mgr
9.3K Posts
1
May 17th, 2011 09:00
You don't have to wipe the drive to put it in and make it a hotspare. The raid controller won't wipe it till it needs it though.
DELL-Daniel R
57 Posts
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May 17th, 2011 09:00
The drive doesn’t need to be blank to be set as a hotspare. If that drive is ever brought into the array due to a failure the data will be overwritten.
-Daniel
theflash1932
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
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16.3K Posts
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May 17th, 2011 10:00
It does not have to be blank. You simply need to add it "hot" to the system, and use OpenManage to assign it as the hot-spare. Any data or configuration information on that disk will then be ignored.
alices
65 Posts
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May 17th, 2011 14:00
Thanks to all for answering!