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Adding a drive to a raid array

Hi,

I have a LSI 9260-8i HBA controller with a 3 drive RAID 6 configuration. I'd like to add a 4th drive to it. I've read the docs but am not sure how the controller behaves exactly. Does it bring in the new drive in the background while the array is in use, or do you have to wait until the process is complete through the card's BIOS UI? That could take a while with 3-4TB of data on the current set.

Thanks!

--Ben

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David

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Ben Conner

ASKER

Good advice. These are the HGST HE8 8TB drives, so not the stuff from Best Buy.

Have been struggling to get a darn flash drive bootable so I can do a firmware upgrade. It is indeed behind on that.

Given the load I typically see I don't think performance would be an issue.

So I add the drive into the array and I can then reboot the server and it will continue rebuilding it with the new drive? (vSphere 6.0 environment)

--Ben

David

Those are wrong drives for that controller. You want a native 512 byte drive. The HE8s come in 512e and 4kn. (Meaning that drive actually does 4k I/O internally, and emulates a 512 byte drive with read/modify/writes.. Unless EVERY I/O is not only a multiple of 4KB, but it is aligned to block number that is a multiple of 4KB, then you will take a performance hit, AND in event you are rebuilding then you risk data loss.

That ancient controller can't deal with 4KB sectored drives either, so if you got one of them, then it just won't work.

Ben Conner

ASKER

Rats. Even with updated firmware?
Which in that line would you suggest?
I thought the 512e indicates (e)mulation mode that would be compatible with older controllers. ?

--Ben