remove bad drive

edgjerp · 10-02-2008, 10:44 AM

can I hot disconnect an sata drive (it is supposed to be partition free) to see if I get any errors, or will my system crash then? SMART says the disk PASSED in testing, but

Code:

Self-test execution status:      ( 121) The previous self-test completed having
                                        the read element of the test failed.

Last time I tried to remove this drive, all my md raid arrays went offline, even when none had parts on this drive (maybe I removed wrong drive)

all my drives use scsi driver, sda-sdg (scd for optical) sde should be sata channel 2?

farslayer · 10-02-2008, 11:17 AM

It depends. does your controller specifically support hot-plugging of drives ?

i.e. This 3ware controller.

Code:

3ware® 9000 Series Feature

    * Optimized hardware XOR RAID 5 engine provides true hardware based RAID and intelligent drive management functions
    * Supports RAID levels 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, Single Disk (JBOD)
    * Single array capacity scales to over 3 terabytes per controller (64-bit LBA support)
    * 128 MB of ECC protected SDRAM, upgradable to 256 MB
    * Battery Backup Unit (BBU) ready
    * Online Capacity Expansion ready
    * StorSwitch point-to-point, non-blocking switched architecture for highest performance
    * Bootable array support for greater fault tolerance
    * Variable stripe size for performance tuning by application
    * Multiple array background initialization for immediate data redundancy
    * Host controller and drive command queuing for highest performance
    * Multiple card support (up to 4) within a system for large storage requirements
    * Multiple logical volumes and RAID levels can exist on one card for maximum configuration flexibility
    * Legacy and SATA II out of band (OOB) staggered drive spin-up support
    * Hot-swap and hot-spare support for data availability
    * Dynamic sector repair for robust data protection
    * S.M.A.R.T. disk drive monitoring for reliability
    * SMTP support for email/pager notification
    * Emergency Flash Recovery protects against power failure during firmware upgrades
    * Support for drive activity LED
    * Flexible task scheduling for increased useability
    * Multi-lane connectors based on the Infiniband SFF-8470 specification
    * Complete configuration management suite
    * 3ware BIOS Manager (3BM) - BIOS configuration tool
    * 3ware Disk Manager 2 (3DM 2) - browser-based management tool
    * Command Line Interface (CLI) - scriptable configuration tool

If the specs do not specify hot-swap support then I would not remove a drive from that controller while the system is on.

edgjerp · 10-02-2008, 11:21 AM

It was my fault; I could apparently not count to find the right drive. and I needed to shut down my system to physically remove the drive anyway. after one mistake today, I finally pulled the right one.