need to replace a bad drive in a 3-drive IDE raid 5 array...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad Pears
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Brad Pears

I am pretty sure this shouldn;t really be a problem but maybe someone can
give me some specific instructions so that I am doing the proper thing...

We have an older Dell SC1600SC with three 80gb IDE drives in a RAID 5 array.

This morning when I came in, the server was squawking quite loudly. When I
looked into it, I discovered that the drive attached to channel 2 had
failed. So currently I am running with just the two drives. Unfortunately
these are NOT hot-swap drives so the system will have to be taked down to
replace the bad drive. (this scares me)

I am currently in the process of backing up this machine completely (it;s a
windows 2000 SBS machine so it runs SQL server, Exchange etc...etc...) We
don't want this machine going down - lets just put it like that!

So, to replace the bad drive and get this puppy up and running with all
three drives again, I am thinking I should follow these steps...

1) Shut machine down
2) replace the drive attached to the proper IDE cable associated with
channel 2. (I believe they are marked)
3) Start system back up (crossing fingers that it boots up again) , go into
device manager, find that disk, right-click and select "Rebuild"

I think that's all I need to do in a perfect world correct??? Does the
"rebuild" option also format the drive though or is that something I need
to do first?

Any help that can be provided to make this as painless as a process as
possible would be really welcome!!

Thanks, Brad
 
What disk controller? I'd be surprised if they're IDE. Generally you do the
rebuild from within controller bios or using the array management software
that came with your disk controller.



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
Yep, it's IDE. At the time this server was purchased (7 years ago) they
wanted to save money and went with IDE over SCSI. The controller is a CERC
ATA100 4 channel controller.

Thanks, Brad


Dave Patrick said:
What disk controller? I'd be surprised if they're IDE. Generally you do
the rebuild from within controller bios or using the array management
software that came with your disk controller.



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Brad Pears said:
I am pretty sure this shouldn;t really be a problem but maybe someone can
give me some specific instructions so that I am doing the proper thing...

We have an older Dell SC1600SC with three 80gb IDE drives in a RAID 5
array.

This morning when I came in, the server was squawking quite loudly. When
I looked into it, I discovered that the drive attached to channel 2 had
failed. So currently I am running with just the two drives. Unfortunately
these are NOT hot-swap drives so the system will have to be taked down to
replace the bad drive. (this scares me)

I am currently in the process of backing up this machine completely
(it;s a windows 2000 SBS machine so it runs SQL server, Exchange
etc...etc...) We don't want this machine going down - lets just put it
like that!

So, to replace the bad drive and get this puppy up and running with all
three drives again, I am thinking I should follow these steps...

1) Shut machine down
2) replace the drive attached to the proper IDE cable associated with
channel 2. (I believe they are marked)
3) Start system back up (crossing fingers that it boots up again) , go
into device manager, find that disk, right-click and select "Rebuild"

I think that's all I need to do in a perfect world correct??? Does the
"rebuild" option also format the drive though or is that something I
need to do first?

Any help that can be provided to make this as painless as a process as
possible would be really welcome!!

Thanks, Brad
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Nope, it's hardware RAID. I did a little research on that controller, and
basically it is saying that once I install the new drive and restart the
system, because it is part of a redundant array, it should automatically
start a "rebuild" onto the newly installed disk and I "should" be good to
go! I am also thinking I should install a fourth disk (the controller can
handle 4) and set it up as a global hot spare. Apparently this controller
has that capability. I figure if one of these drives has gone bad, there is
a good possibility that the others may not be too far behind - being as they
are all original drives. I should likely just replace them all and be done
with it...

Thanks, Brad

Dave Patrick said:
So it is software raid?


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Brad Pears said:
Yep, it's IDE. At the time this server was purchased (7 years ago) they
wanted to save money and went with IDE over SCSI. The controller is a
CERC ATA100 4 channel controller.

Thanks, Brad
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Yes, most of them have this capability. The rebuild is generally faster when
done within controller bios.


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect
 
hmmm, maybe I'll do that instead then...

Thanks, Brad

Dave Patrick said:
Yes, most of them have this capability. The rebuild is generally faster
when done within controller bios.


--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

Brad Pears said:
Nope, it's hardware RAID. I did a little research on that controller,
and basically it is saying that once I install the new drive and restart
the system, because it is part of a redundant array, it should
automatically start a "rebuild" onto the newly installed disk and I
"should" be good to go! I am also thinking I should install a fourth disk
(the controller can handle 4) and set it up as a global hot spare.
Apparently this controller has that capability. I figure if one of these
drives has gone bad, there is a good possibility that the others may not
be too far behind - being as they are all original drives. I should
likely just replace them all and be done with it...

Thanks, Brad
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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