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renzokuken
August 6th, 2009, 11:54 AM
Hi all

Apologies if I put this in the wrong place, it's not directly related to Ubuntu (although it is ubuntu running on the server), but I know you guys are going to be more help than anyone else.

I came in this morning to the sweet sound of the drive fail alarm on our small server......a single drive has failed.

We don't have any replacement drives and i cant find a single one online to buy so i can swap it in and rebuild the drive in the raid array. So i have a couple of questions. (FYI, its 4 drives in total, all matching, but i cant remember what raid configuration is being used.

1. Does the replacement drive have to be EXACTLY the same make/model/size etc, or can i use a similar one?

2. How do i know if its actually the physical side of the drive that is borked and not just an inconsistency error?

3. i.e. what would happen if i was to rebuild the drive that says its failing, i.e not replacing it? (since i dont necessarily know the actual drive is screwed - see 2.)

Sorry if these are dumb questions, but i know nothing about raid really, i just got lumped with being in charge of it when i joined our research group.

thanks in advance

renzo

edit: its hardware raid.....forgot to mention, sorry