3Ware 3W-7410 - Escalade 7410 RAID Controller, Manual

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3ware Disk Array
Configuration Utility
The 3ware Disk Array Configuration Utility allows you to create disk arrays
by combining disks, deleting disks or breaking disk arrays back into their
member disks. You can also specify an available drive as a hot spare. If an
array becomes degraded, the hot spare will automatically be substituted for
the faulted drive.
Note:
The BIOS will not be installed if no drives are attached to
the Escalade ATA RAID Controller. The ATA RAID Controller
shares one IRQ on the PCI bus.
Hot spare and hot swap
Hot Spare is the label given to a drive that is available, active and designated
as a spare. This designated drive is applied automatically when a drive
degrades and the array is rebuilt.
Hot Swap is the term applied to the process
of swapping out a drive without having to shut down the system. This is use-
ful when you need to swap out a defective drive, manually or automatically,
with a pre-assigned spare.
There are three methods for adding a drive as a spare. You may designate a
drive as a Hot Spare during the BIOS page display, you may designate a drive
as a Hot Spare through the 3DM Configure page, or you may designate a
drive as a Hot Spare through the CLI (Command Line Interface). The first two
methods are discussed below. The CLI is available from the 3ware website at
http://www.3ware.com/support/download.asp. The manual that accompanies
the CLI describes how to work with it.