Adding drives to a RAID 5 array in Dell PowerEdge 1800
Simplified version of my situation.
I have two Dell PowerEdge 1800 servers, each with three, 80 GB hard drives in a RAID 5 array. The motherboard gets fried in a lightening strike on one of the PowerEdge machines so I'm down to one. The PowerEdge 1800 has room for six hard drives.
Question: What happens if I add the 3 hard drives from the dead server into the drive bay of the good server? Will the 3 added drives be formatted and assimilated into a single RAID 5 array, or will I have an opportunity to create a second RAID 5 array without losing the data on the 3 additional drives.
Ultimately, I need to access the existing data on the 3 orphaned hard drives and have the drives available for additional storage.
Suggestions?
I have two Dell PowerEdge 1800 servers, each with three, 80 GB hard drives in a RAID 5 array. The motherboard gets fried in a lightening strike on one of the PowerEdge machines so I'm down to one. The PowerEdge 1800 has room for six hard drives.
Question: What happens if I add the 3 hard drives from the dead server into the drive bay of the good server? Will the 3 added drives be formatted and assimilated into a single RAID 5 array, or will I have an opportunity to create a second RAID 5 array without losing the data on the 3 additional drives.
Ultimately, I need to access the existing data on the 3 orphaned hard drives and have the drives available for additional storage.
Suggestions?
Gary Coltharp
The RAID config should be read from the drives and the data will likely be accessible assuming they didnt get damaged in the strike.
ASKER
>>The RAID config should be read from the drives
The RAID configuration was identical on both machines. Are you saying that the new host machine will recognize the added three drives as belonging to their own RAID array and keep them separate? Do I need to do anything except power down, add the drives, and power up (they are not hot swap).
>>assuming they didn't get damaged in the strike
Actually, I moved the drives from the damaged machine to the good machine because its services were more mission critical. The three orphaned drives were originally in the undamaged machine, so they should be fine.
The RAID configuration was identical on both machines. Are you saying that the new host machine will recognize the added three drives as belonging to their own RAID array and keep them separate? Do I need to do anything except power down, add the drives, and power up (they are not hot swap).
>>assuming they didn't get damaged in the strike
Actually, I moved the drives from the damaged machine to the good machine because its services were more mission critical. The three orphaned drives were originally in the undamaged machine, so they should be fine.
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ASKER
Ok, I'm feeling more confident. I just need to wait until the services provided by the running server will not be sorely missed.
I'll give your suggestions a try and let you know what happens. Thanks.
I'll give your suggestions a try and let you know what happens. Thanks.
No problem.
ASKER
Managed to move the data on the three drives to a hard drive on a workstation as a backup then decided not to try to install the three drives into the working server just yet. In a week or two I will have another Dell PowerEdge 1800 freed up because we are moving to a hosted email solution. With that I can restore the services lost when the hard drives were orphaned.
Thanks for your help.
Thanks for your help.
ASKER
Thanks for your suggestions.