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How to change hard disks SCSI 5/iR Raid 1
Our Poweredge 840 RAID 1 is 5 years old this month so we decided to put new hard drives in it as a precautionary measure. Popped it open and realized it is NOT hot swappable. Bought same size/speed replacement drives (Western Digital 250 GB Caviar Blue SATA 6 Gb/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive - WD2500AAKX) to replace the Dell drives that came with it (Dell 250GB SARA 3.5 inch 7.2K)
What I Don't know how to do is swap them out without interruption other than a reboot. Do I just take drive 2 out and replace it. Reboot, wait a few hours for it to rebuild from Drive 1, then do the same for Drive 1?
I can't find any software/applicaiton to manage the RAID. Seems to be BIOS level.
We have a SAS 5IR Internal RAID adapter PCI-Express with a SAS5iR SATA/SAS Controller to support two drives in RAID 1
BUT the manual that came with it clearly says SCSI 5/iR.
Anyone have a link to step by step instructions to swap out drives and not loose data/config?
Thank you for your help!
Mark
DELL-Daniel My
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August 10th, 2012 17:00
Hello Mark
You will want to boot into the SAS5 controller BIOS and OFFLINE/FORCE OFFLINE the drive you are replacing before you swap it out. If you do not force the drive offline then when the controller boots up with the blank drive it will likely wipe all of the data across the array. The problem is that the controller will not know the drive is replaced and it will try to make the two drives identical, wiping out the data.
Thanks
theflash1932
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August 10th, 2012 21:00
Technically, all SAS and SATA drives are hot-swappable, regardless of whether they have the convenient hot-swap tray ... you just have to be more careful not to bump/touch anything while working inside while its on. That way, you don't have to worry about what the controller will do with multiple configs/disks. As Daniel said, OMSA is the management software for the RAID, allowing you to do everything (and more) that you can do from BIOS. Also note that the SAS 5and is a 3Gbps controller, so even though 6Gbps drives will work, you cannot utilize the 6Gbps speed.
Dev Mgr
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August 12th, 2012 20:00
One other major note; make a backup of your data, just in case, and verify it's a good backup.
patientreturns
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August 16th, 2012 16:00
Fantastic! Thank you all for your help. I'll execute these steps later this week.
patientreturns
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August 16th, 2012 16:00
Good point on the 6Gbps. I never even thought of that. Can you suggest a better RAID controller that will plug into the same slot? Wonder if it is worth it. The server is a Pervasive SQL and X-ray image server. So I figured any speed enhancement would be felt. Thank you for your reply. I appreciate your time.
theflash1932
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August 16th, 2012 21:00
There are no 6Gbps controllers supported on the 840. The H200 and H700 are 6Gbps but are only supported on newer servers.