How do I Change a damaged Disk in a Raid 5 array

Question

I have a server with a 4-drives Raid 5 array; one of the disks is damaged. All the disks are hot pluggable. My Question is, I want to replace the damaged disk with a new one, do I have to shutdown the server or should I just change the hard disk with the server on and it will rebuild the array? There is a procedure to follow? My Server is a HP.

Regards.

Answer 1

If the disks are hot-swappable, you should be able to just swap the damaged disk with a new one of the same type, size and speed; the RAID array should be automatically rebuilt by the controller.

Howewer, if you can post the server and controller model, the full configuration of the controller and the operating system installed on the server, we could tell you better.

Answer 2

Looking at the documentation is of course what you should do. You probably also have HP support, so you can call them since you are not familiar with this.

In general however, you just stick the new one in. But, since RAID 5 has to rebuild the drive from parity, keep in mind this will put load on the server.

Answer 3

What model is the RAID controller? The documentation for the controller should make it very clear what your options are.

Answer 4

http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00688683/c00688683.pdf

HP Smart Array E200 Controller User Guide

"Replacing hard drives"

If you insert a hot-pluggable drive into a drive bay while the system power is on, all disk activity in the array pauses for a second or two while the new drive is spinning up.

When the drive has achieved its normal spin rate, data recovery to the replacement drive begins automatically (as indicated by the blinking Online/Activity LED on the replacement drive) if the array is in a fault-tolerant configuration.

If you replace a drive belonging to a fault-tolerant configuration while the system power is off, a POST message appears when the system is next powered up.

This message prompts you to press the F1 key to start automatic data recovery. If you do not enable automatic data recovery, the logical volume remains in a ready-to-recover condition and the same POST message appears whenever the system is restarted.