refresh my memory hot swap drive bay replace?

itdaddy

hey guys
it has been awhile since I did this and wanted to get you advice?
I was thinking just place them in the drive bay they should be fine
sinc hot swap sata drives but do I need to rebuild usng software
on server?

we have a 2 3 bay sata drives. and the one side of 3 has dead fans
but we cannot get the fans so our vendor shipped us a five bay SATA
hot swap (the 2 3 bays we had (6bays totals) were hot swap tooo)

so if I replace the 3 bays with a 5 bay sata set do I need to go into software
and say rebuild or would it just recognize it? and do I have to pplace the drives back into certain slots??? not sure been awhile.

thanks


drive bay1(0 1 2) drive bay 2(3 4 5)

Michael.J.Palmer

I noticed that you asked the same question twice up here, this one seems longer though so I'll respond to it.

I'm guessing that it'd just recognize the new five bay. The upside to SATA drives was that you didn't have to worry so much about installation problems, as long as you had the drivers for it on the BIOS then you were set. Since you're using a server rack I'd assume it's the same set up for the most part, with them being hot swappable they'd just recognize a new drive as soon as you plugged it in, it'd be like you were adding an additional two drives to the three you already have.

Another fun part of SATA drives is that they normally don't have to be plugged into a specific port number. I've set up computers with multiple SATA drives (four or more actually) and just plugged them into random SATA plug-ins. If it's a PC, you'd just be able to set up the boot order through BIOS and it wouldn't make any difference, with a server I'm not sure how it'd be much different, but I guess it depends on the server software and whether you're running a form of RAID or not (which I'm assuming you are since it's a server rack of SATA drives).

I hope I at least opened the door a bit for your own thought process, it wouldn't hurt to do some more research though to be on the safe side.

itdaddy

TechMonkey
thanks yeah, I have some ideas but it has been awhile since I messed with the sata raid. I am sure it is just like you said. Just like to get some refresh tips before I mess with it it is our email servers and yeah it has 6 active drives in 2 separate bays of 3 and the 1 set of 3 (the bay fans on it haved died) and I had to order a new sata 5 bay drive due to Enlight manufacturer doesnt make the 3 bay anymore..so yeah here goes I do it today after noon hee should be educational will tell you what happens when I am done. But I agree should be just plug and go
My concerns was where is the database kept for the drive recognition? Is it on the controllers of the sata drives or the server and do I have to change one drive at a time and rebuilt it and wait? not sure yet
think it is raid 5. will let you know when I am done
thank you

itdaddy

Explained better:

I just turned off server removed all sata drives from old bay put them into new sata bay, turned on server and bam. They all were okay. No rebuilding. So all configurations must be on sata drives as entities so they keep their original raid state they were built upon. way cool. I love sata raid.

can you say plug and play! sata raid was so easy and fast just like it should be
we have two raid 1 sets into a raid 10 so mirrored raid 1 sets.