I am upgrading my servers and instead of migrating which is a lot of downtime, I opted for HDD swap. The web host as suggested that there may be data loss if swapping takes place.
I am running RHEL 5, RAID
Will there be data loss?
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Sounds like a question you should ask your host. But you have backups, so if you do lose any data, you can always restore from those, right?– HopelessN00bNov 27, 2012 at 19:41
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@HopelessN00b They said there would be loss of data, something I do not understand. They could just power down the servers swap, power up new servers. What is so difficult, or am I missing something here?– JeanNov 27, 2012 at 19:43
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@longneck Q updated– JeanNov 27, 2012 at 19:44
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See serverfault.com/q/440352/3139– Jeff FerlandNov 27, 2012 at 19:50
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1@Jean Again, this a question for your host. "Why would moving a hard drive cause data loss? And what, exactly does 'data loss' mean?" And again, you have backups, so it's not a big deal either way, right?– HopelessN00bNov 27, 2012 at 19:53
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1 Answer
Any time you move disks around, there's a chance for data loss, stemming from many possible causes including but not limited to:
- DC tech drops your disks on the way to the new server
- DC tech doesn't wear proper grounding straps and fries a controller board one or more drives
- RAID gets misconfigured on the new system and over-writes all of your data
- Drives get inserted in the wrong order, confusing the RAID controller
- etc., etc.
All this to say that if you have backups, don't worry about it. If you do not have backups, do not migrate nor doing anything else on your server until you're sure you have watertight backup and restore procedures down pat.
The chances are fairly slim of any of the above things happening, but the chances are non-zero, so you need to do your due diligence in preparing for the migration by double and triple-checking your backup situation.
