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Swapping RAID cards

I have a server I have diagnosed to a bad RAID card. I want to replace it with an exact replacement, but I'm not sure how I will go about setting the drives back up because their info is on the other RAID card. It is a Dell PowerEdge 800, the card is a: D9872 DELL 6Channel Pci 64BIT 66MHZ SATA RAID Controller.

I want to take the bad out, put a new one in, and have my data/OS come back up, any way to do that?

David

The cards support drive roaming and will automatically get the configuration, but you must make sure that the cards are running the same firmware if you want to insure success.

If you do not have the ability to determine firmware of the old card, then you will have to contact Dell to find out if that is going to be an issue. The vast majority of the time they won't change metadata and cause things to be screwed up. But you need to take the necessary precautions.

The online release notes for controllers don't go into that detail.

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David

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dbestcomputers

ASKER

Great thanks. The system boots and works OK right now, it just BSODs after being on a couple of days, I used some debugging tools to determine it was a drive/controller issue. So at this point I can boot to the RAID BIOS, locate the firmware version, and order a replacement. Thanks!

David

Correct - please read release notes. you may have to update drivers or BIOS first, since you are booted to it.