Replacing and Upgrading Hard Drives

ARAID 1500, ARAID 2000 User’s Manual

Q:What should I do if I need to replace a defective hard drive?

1.To minimize the risk of losing mission critical data, make it a practice to keep a spare hard drive of the same make and model for the next two years. Always restock your spare inventory with new hard drive(s) of the same model whenever a defective hard drive is replaced. These drives can be easily added to the ARAID disk array and rebuilt by running the Auto Rebuild facility.

2.If your replacement drives are the same manufacturer as the original drives but are a larger capacity, place the surviving drive in the upper bay where it will be designated as the source drive. Boot the PC from the upper bay source drive. When the operating system is ready to serve, insert the replacement drive into lower bay. The disk auto rebuild sequence will now start. If it fails to start, switch the front panel operation mode switch from “Single” to “Default” The BIOS HDD type can set to Auto in this case.

For normal operation, always put the smaller capacity drive in upper bay and larger capacity drive in lower bay. Never place the larger capacity drive in the upper bay.

Tip: Label each tray with the disk capacity, brand, and model for future reference.

3.The BIOS of some older computers may only be able to access hard drives of 8GB or less. In these instances, you must set the HDD TYPE in the BIOS to USER mode and then key in the Head/Cylinder/Sector data which is printed on the drive label or available from the manufacturer’s website.

4.CASE STUDY:

zCompany ABC uses two Western Digital WD800BBRTL (80GB) hard drives on one ARAID disk array.

zCompany ABC should keep an inventory of spare WD800BBRTL hard drives.

zCompany ABC experiences a disk crash and has no more WD800BBRTL to replace. Instead a new WD1200BBRTL (120GB) is available for replacement. For daily operation, the smaller drive, the WD800BBRTL, needs to be put in Upper Bay and the larger drive, the WD1200BBRTL, must be put in the Lower Bay as a mirrored couple.

In this scenario the mirror couple of WD80GB + WD120GB, its effective capacity is 80GB. RAID 1 disk array capacity is always defined by the capacity of the smaller drive.

zFor Windows User ONLY:

If at some later point the WD800BBRTL malfunctions and the WD1200BBRTL is the surviving drive, you can enlarge the WD1200BBRTL’s partition size from 80GB to 120GB by using a third party’s program, such as Symantec's Ghost. Then mirror it to another WD1200BBRTL and realize a 120GB disk capacity.

Accordance Systems Inc.