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Replacing a hard drive
Before you begin
CAUTION:
•
Before removing a component or blank from an operational device, make sure that you have the
replacement part or blank available. Removing a component or blank impacts the air
fl
ow pattern
and cooling ability of the device. Allow approximately 30 seconds before installing the new or
replacement component to ensure that con
fi
guration data about the removed component is cleared
from the system registry, but, to avoid possible overheating, insert the new or replacement component
within one or two minutes. If the internal temperature exceeds acceptable limits, the device may
overheat and automatically shut down or restart.
•
Parts can be damaged by electrostatic discharge. Use proper anti-static protection.
Best practices
CAUTION:
When replacing a hot-pluggable hard drive, it is important that you follow the guidelines in this section.
Failure to do so could result in data loss and could void your warranty.
Before replacing a hard drive, make note of the following:
•
Be sure that the array has a current, valid backup. All data should be backed up before removing
hard drives or changing con
fi
gurations. Failure to do so could result in permanent loss of data.
•
Remove only hard drives that have been failed or marked as degraded by the controller.
•
Use replacement drives that have a capacity at least as great as that of the smallest drive in the
array. The controller immediately fails drives that have insuf
fi
cient capacity.
•
To prevent the system from erroneously marking hard drives as failed, be sure that the server is the
fi
rst device to be powered down and the last device to be powered back up.
•
When a hot-pluggable hard drive is inserted, all disk activity on the array is paused while the
new hard drive is spinning up (approximately 10 seconds). In fault-tolerant con
fi
gurations, data
recovery onto the replacement hard drive begins automatically (indicated by the blinking online
LED).
•
Sometimes, a hard drive that has previously been failed by the controller may seem to be
operational after the system is power-cycled or after the hard drive has been removed and
reinserted. However, continued use of such marginal hard drives may eventually result in data
loss. Replace marginal hard drives as soon as possible.
•
Open HP-SIM and inspect the Error Counter window for each physical drive in the same array
to con
fi
rm that no other hard drives have errors. For details, see the HP-SIM documentation
on the Management CD.
•
Do not remove a degraded hard drive if any other hard drive member of the array is of
fl
ine
(the online LED is off).
Exceptions:
• When RAID 1+0 is used, drives are mirrored in pairs. Several drives can be in a failed
condition simultaneously (and they can all be replaced simultaneously) without data loss, as
long as no two failed drives belong to the same mirrored pair.
• When RAID 6 (ADG) is used, two drives can fail simultaneously (and be replaced
simultaneously) without data loss.
• If the of
fl
ine drive is a spare, the degraded drive can be replaced.
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Customer replaceable components