Question

Dell 2950 Hard Drive replacement

Asked by: Rod_C

Hey Experts, My Exchange Server, which is a dell 2950 has one of the HD's led blinking orange on one of the 6 disks that is virtually configured as our data drive D:.
My IT consultants who put this thing together did not install it as a RAID. I've never had to replace the drive, but need to know if I replace this drive, would I have to re-format and restore the drive in which I have Backup Exec 12.5?  Would this work or is there a better way. We have 2 storage groups in exchange. Has anyone done this before and did it work or have things that they can share in what I should watch out for?? Thx folks!!!

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Asked On
2009-11-03 at 10:45:43ID24868252
Tags

Dell 2950

,

Microsoft Exchange 2007

,

Windows Server 2008 STD

Topics

Exchange Email Server

,

Windows Server 2008

Participating Experts
2
Points
125
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: WraithbonePosted on 2009-11-03 at 11:21:53ID: 25732468

if its in a raid you just get a disk just like it with the same size or larger. Just take out the old while its running, and put in the new one.

After that install Dell openmanage from their website (called node something)

Login to it, and make sure it resilvers the raid properly.

Hope this helps! :)

 

by: Rod_CPosted on 2009-11-03 at 12:59:09ID: 25733548

Well Last year I was a newbie (and I still am!) and we had consultants put together our exchange server. It was just later that I realized that it was not configured as a RAID, And understandable because it has (6) 36GB drives which would not spare us the space. It would have been great if it was configured as a RAID and I would be able to do a swap and no problem.  But because it is not configured as a RAID would I be killing myself if I restored the copied data on that disk after I re-formated the drive (to replace the bad disk). Or will my exchange services return back to normal?

 

by: WraithbonePosted on 2009-11-03 at 14:01:16ID: 25734277

Install Dell openmanage first. Rhen make sure it's a raid set lup within the application. If it is, proceed as I descriped. Your server won't have any down time.  I have done this 6 times now and it always worked.

If it's not raid you need to buy new disks and move the entire setup to those disks. Use backup exec for this but save the old disks for extra safety.  

 

by: dariusgPosted on 2009-11-03 at 15:01:15ID: 25734854

You can check through OpenManage or reboot the server to check in the RAID OS to see if they actually created a RAID. If your disk is blinking Amber and you can still access all of your data you can be pretty certain that they setup a RAID because if you had a disk failure on a non-RAID system you wouldn't be able to access the data on the failed drive.

 

by: Rod_CPosted on 2009-11-03 at 15:59:14ID: 31649573

Thanks wraithbone, I'm pretty sure that it was not set up in a RAID. But dariusq does have a point that if it is failing that it would not be accessible, It's pretty weird because there is no failure in the software side of things but that amber light is blinking regardless. Will have to do this during none business hours and in part buy new disk!! thanks again guys!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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