Hardware RAID Q

[Trifid]

If I had a server with 2x hdd in RAID0 and 5x hdd in RAID 5. One of these harddrives breaks down do I simply place another exact hdd in and on boot it will repair the hard drive when it goes through the RAID post?

Thanks, Trif.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

If one of the HD's in the RAID0 array dies, then say goodbye to ALL of the data there, even what is on the remaining drive. If you have 5 drives in the RAID 5 array, usually, there will be FOUR drives in the array, and the 5th would be a hot spare... in the event of a failure, the array should be rebuilt incorproating that hot spare, and cutting out the failed drive..... I have never personally set up a RAID5 array, so I don't know if that is default or how much config is needed to have that happen.

 

[Trifid]

Sorry, meant RAID 1.

I set this server up for the "IT Essentials" class aka A+ with out the cert. I want to have a play with it and one of the things was rebuilding the data.

Setting it up was easy once I found enough hard drives, just press a F button after the motheboard POST and select which hdd you want with what array and format them in windows. (ended up with enough for 3 servers with the same hdd config.)

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

Oh, ok... RAID1 is different than RAID0 in that it is mirroring, not striping. In my sig, you can see I have a RAID1 array in my NAS. I haven't yet had a problem with the drives to experience the rebuilding of the array should one fail, but yes, with RAID1, you just replace the drive, and it should rebuild itself. The amount of user input needed to rebuild I would guess depends upon the hardware it is running on. On my D-Link DNS-323, it is supposed to be automatic.

The thing you need to watch for is if the drives are hot-swappable or not. If they ARE, you can unplug them and swap them with the server on, if they are NOT, you will have to power down the server to do the swap.