Replacing failed drives in array

[jjm2001]

I'm new to RAID, hence the following question:

If I replace a failed drive that is part of an existing raid 5 array, do I have to partion and format it or does the controller take care of this?

Specifics:
Compaq Proliant 3000 with SmartArray 2DH controller. RAID 5 array with online spare. The online spare failed on spin up after restart following power outage. Do I just have to replace the drive, 9.1 ultra 3 hot plug scsi, and the controller will take care of the rest or do i have to partition/format through OS which is NT4?

thanks!

 

[Beaghler]

Are you sure the drive has failed? The on-line spares usually do not light up until they actually come into the array. They will briefly light up during POST. Insight manager (available on SmartStart CDs or at Compaq. I like ver.5.5 better than ver 7, but they're pushing 7 ) can tell you the status of the server and it's components at a glance. It can tell you of a failure before your users notice it. It will tell you right away if you have a failed drive. I'd use that before declaring the drive dead.

To answer your question, though: pop the dead drive out and insert a new one. No muss, no fuss. The system will handle everything. If your hot spare is online, the system will get the new drive setup, re-write the stripes and data and place the hot spare back into standby mode.

With RAID 5, you actually have quite a bit of redundancy, the hot spare gives you even more. I've lost 2 disks at one time before and not suffered a data or performance loss. We won't go into what happened when 3 at one time decided to die.

 

[jjm2001]

Thanks. I'll check the insight manager. The drive failure was caught by POST on startup. Usually, the spare lights are off on the spare so the failure light caught my attention.

No muss, no fuss is nice. I guess I'm just not used to being able to replace a drive without some muss and fuss to prepare it.

 

[Karidian]

I have a similar config with a Proliant 3000, a SmartArray 2DH controller, and three 18Gb hot-swap drives. One drive failed and I simply popped in a replacement and all seemed fine initially. Now, however, the logical drive still shows 12.8Gb of 33.9Gb used, but there are no folders or files listed.

How can I get to the data?