What is HOT-SWAP SCSI hard DRIVES?

[vrcatherine]

Hi,

I am new to the networking/hardware.
Correct me if i am wrong.

What is HOT-SWAP SCSI hard DRIVES?

We have ordered a IBM server and while customizing
the server we said we need 2 hard drives.

1. 36gb SCSI HARD DRIVE
2. 36gb SCSI hard drive.

IBM 36.4 GB 10K rpm Ultra320 SCSI Hot-Swap HDD

Now today when we got the server and i was checking
the hard drives thru explorer. This is what i see.

C:\ 4GB for pre-loading windows 2000 server.

So i guess from the first hard drive they have used the
4GB for loading the OS.(windows 2000 server).

This is what i was seeing basically through windows
explorer.

I went through administration tools/computer management
and formatted the remaining 32GB from the first Drive
and name it as E:\


I dont see the 2nd hard drive in this management tools
Why is this ?

Do i have to do something else ?

As i am not sure what this HOT-SWAP drives do ?

 

[Andreh]

Hot Swap drives are ones that are designed to be removed/installed while the system (or computer) is running ie. The power is on.

The disk might need to be configured in the SCSI interface. This is usually shown (and accessable) during the boot-up process of the computer. You will probably need to add the disk in this area before you can see it in the Windows environment.

If you provide the server manufaturer and exact model, you will probably gain more precise help.

Regards.

 

[Airshot]

The 2 disks may be configured in a RAID 1 array as a mirrored pair, so if one fails you can pull it out while the server is running on the other disk, and replace it with a new one, which will then rebuild itself. They will appear in the OS as a single disk. You will not get 72Gb of disk space with 2 x 36Gb disks in a RAID 1 array.

 

[vrcatherine]

Thanks for the info.

Now here is the thing i dont want to use hard drives
for any raid,arrary or mirroring.

They should work just as 2 different disks.

Is there a way i can accomplish the above ?

what utility should i use and how can do this ?

 

[knuts]

You should have recieved a scsi/raid setup tool/disk/program with your server. If you want to set up your server with two seperate hard drives you need to make sure not to setup your drives into an raid aray. Raid aray's are nice to use though, it prives fault talerance incase one of your disks fail you won't loose your valuble data. Some aray's provide faster data retreval/writing.

You can setup your two hard drives into one logical drive with your provided scsi raid aray program. Then through Windows disk management make two, three, four... Logical drives on your hard disks. This will provide you with the multiple disk drives you desire as well as the benifits of a raid aray.

 

[vrcatherine]

Here is one more thing.

I am able to see 2 physical drives
on the server.

This is what i did:


DISK 0
======

C:\ 4GB for windows 2000 server
e:\ 32GB partitioned

DISK 1
=======
F:\ 36 GB SCSI DRIVE



Now talking about the "primary" & "logical" drives

C:\ says healthy


I gave E:\ & F:\ drives also as "primary"

And when i re-booted the system , it says
"no operating system".

I guess i had screwed up the system.

Please let know as what i need to give, while
partitioning the drives ( logical /primary)
for drives other than C:\

 

[knuts]

I not exactly sure what you mean by primary. When you first installed Windows server on drive 0 you created a 4 gb partition then installed windows into that partion wright? After windows was up and running you created logical drive e(32 gb)and logical drive f (36gb). Setting any other drive as the primary drive would cause windows to search for your Operating System on that partition. I am not sure how you did that though. When you create your logical drives in Windows Disk Management you only need to create a simple volume then format it. That is all you need to do. If you set youre e and f drive as the primary I would think that your computer doesn't know where you O/S is. You would have to use FDisk through DOs to repair your disks or it might be easyer to reinstall your O/S if you don't have any valuble data to loose. If you choose to reinstall your O/S I would as I stated earlier setup your two Scsi disks as Raid 0 this would give you the same amount of disk space as having two seperate independant drives however you will have faster writing/reading speed. You whould then create the indivual logical drives that you would like.

http://www.topsecurity.ca

 

[vrcatherine]

Just making the drive Primary , does it
look for Operating system or it should be
Primary(active) ??