Re: Mission Critical procedural advice requested, please.

From: Steve Stewart (steve_at_nospam.com)
Date: 03/24/04 

Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 16:15:08 GMT

A little confused here....

I have a RAID 5 array with 4 drives, and one drive is dead. It is
drive #2 in a 4 series. If I put a new drive in to occupy the #2
spot(while hot) and let it rebuild and then remove it (while hot), it
sounds like you are saying that the newly introduced drive will
contain a master copy of my drive? Is that the benefit you are
explaining to me? My old #2 drive is already completely out of the
system. Dell had me pull it out, which I think was a bad idea.

Thanks!

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 19:26:14 +1100, "SuperGumby [SBS MVP]"
<not@your.nellie> wrote:

>hang on, the server's up and you have hot swap capability.
>
>I'd probably throw the new drive in first and rebuild the array, then pull
>the new drive (while still hot, but after resync) and put it on a shelf, a
>padded shelf, with antistatic stuff and a BIG SIGN "DO NOT, UNDER THREAT OF
>COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF PAIN, TOUCH THIS DEVICE".
>
>Then I'd power down the server and put the tape drive in. If she comes up OK
>it's time for an immediate backup, tell the users to go home.
>
>Sort out any errors, restart numerous times to ensure the drive which has
>already given you errors will now reliably work, and IF you're happy with it
>plug the now out of sync drive off the shelf back in (while hot) and resync.
>
>Then you take the drive which was not on the shelf out and put it through
>some diagnostics. If it passes it goes back in and resyncs, and you sleep.
>
>"Steve Stewart" <steve@nospam.com> wrote in message
>news:cn4260l2rueojks9r5cisei50vgi65p0c8@4ax.com...
>>
>> Thanks for the response. You are right, the Dell does have a hot swap
>> RAID, but for some reason the Dell technician had me pull the drive
>> out while the system was down. I'm thinking that you are right about
>> this. I'm sick of the CRC errors in my backup log and they make me
>> very uncomfortable. I'm also thinking about copying the server data
>> over to a workstation before I replace anything. I've been researching
>> xcopy, ntbackup, and robocopy, but I'm not sure as to which solution
>> will let me perform a file backup onto a workstation with exchange
>> data and company files.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 15:32:10 +1100, "Henry Craven" <IUnknown@d.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >Steve, I can well understand your nervousness. Consecutive bad
>> >experiences have a tendency to do that to you.
>> >
>> >What is your Drive Setup ?
>> >The Poweredge 4400 come with Hot Swap RAID don't they (?) so I don't
>> >understand why you powered down.
>> >
>> >I must say that my first option would be to replace the Tape Drive so I
>> >could have a Good Backup to restore from ASAP. Then mess with the rest
>> >of the Hardware.
>>
>