RAID 5 and a bad disk

xaeriee

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Aug 3, 2017
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I bought an old HP Proliant DL something G5... I installed a cache battery because the HP RAID software told me I could not have RAID 5 without one. I bought refurbished disks really cheap online, one 70GB disk, and three 300GB disks.

After I installed the cache battery, one of the disks decided to amber light on me. I was able to cut a deal with the Vendor and they sent me another disk.


My questions are: Do I replace the faulty disk prior to setting up the RAID? I worry replacing the disk without the RAID setup will cause issues. But they weren't previously used so I'm not worried about data. I don't want another disk to go bad for some reason. The OS is on the 70GB disk. So it should be fine right? I worry I did something wrong during the cache battery install to cause one of the disks to go bad but then again that's just my luck. I want to do this the right way. How do I proceed?


Edit: Oh... duh. RAID 5 requires at least 3 disks. So I need that third disk up and running. Can the disk be ejected without already being setup as a RAID? And they're hot swap right? So I don't need to power off?
 
Solution
Not really sure what you are asking, if you did not setup the system with RAID 5 yet, yes put the disk in before you do that if you are planning on using that disk as part of the RAID array. I am guessing you will be using the three 300GB disks in the RAID and the 70GB as a stand-alone from what you have.

Keep in mind that RAID does not equal backup, it is only for disaster recovery to get a system running quickly after a drive fails. You still need a separate drive to keep your files on for backup.

I would always power off the computer before swapping drives unless you are running some mission critical system that can't be down for a few minutes. Say if you are running Amazon or eBay on the server.
Not really sure what you are asking, if you did not setup the system with RAID 5 yet, yes put the disk in before you do that if you are planning on using that disk as part of the RAID array. I am guessing you will be using the three 300GB disks in the RAID and the 70GB as a stand-alone from what you have.

Keep in mind that RAID does not equal backup, it is only for disaster recovery to get a system running quickly after a drive fails. You still need a separate drive to keep your files on for backup.

I would always power off the computer before swapping drives unless you are running some mission critical system that can't be down for a few minutes. Say if you are running Amazon or eBay on the server.
 
Solution