Hard Disk replacement
 

Hi Friends,

For the first time, I need to replace a hard dsik( Raid array failure).
It contains important installation&Applications as well.
We are using Dell Poweredge2000 servers.

Can you please assist us in guiding with necessary points
like backup,reconfiguring,mount points definitions(fstab etc),each step in a sequence....whatever is needed...
I will really appreciate your nice and patient response on this.We are using RHEL 3.0

Thanks
VSR.

What type of raid do you have (software or hardware)? To determine this, first, is there a separate controller for the raid drives? Also, type "df -hl" at a console shell prompt to determine the device the bulk of the raid drive data is on (sda, md0, etc).

Last time I checked, software raids used /dev/md0 - /dev/md## for the software raids, /dev/mapper/<volume name> for Logival Volume Management (LVM), and hardware raids will show up as /dev/sd[a-z] or a different device depending on the controller used. If there is a hardware controlled raid, you'll need to reboot into the controller's firmware (or see if there is a Linux raid configuration utility forthe controler) to determine the type of raid, and which drive is failing. If you have a mirroring raid or a striped with parity raid (raid 4 or 5), you are in luck. With these types of raids, the system can be recovered automatically by replacing the faulty drive, and letting the controller rebuild the raid (the new drive will need to be added to the raid configuration).

Ultimately, the best thing is to have a complete backup of the data. This way you can replace the entire array with a larger capacity setup in the future, should you need to.

Could you post a copy of /etc/fstab? This would be usefull in determining the next step. If data loss is emminent, BACKUP EVERYTHING! Restoring data isn't as painful as recreating data.