Texas Memory Systems RamSan-325/325c user manual Hot Swapping Disk Drives

9.3 Hot Swapping Disk Drives

The RamSan-325 includes four internal hard disk drives in a RAID configuration.

The RamSan’s internal disk drives are equipped with industry standard Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART). The RamSan uses SMART to track vital hard drive performance statistics, which helps it to diagnose imminent disk failures. The RamSan system monitoring software queries the disks periodically about their SMART status. If SMART indicates an imminent disk failure, the system monitoring software will display a warning message in the system log.

If a single hard disk drive fails, the system continues to write to the available hard disk drives. When this occurs, replace the malfunctioning disk with a new hard disk drive. Once inserted, the system synchronizes the new disk. While the restore degrades overall system write performance if using Active BackupTM, read operations continue uninterrupted.

Important:

Do not remove disk drives during synchronization. Removing disk drives may destroy data on all disks, which requires removing and replacing all drives for a complete synchronization with memory.

If all hard disks fail, the system automatically detects this and stays operational; however, the system remains volatile until all hard drives are functioning properly. When the new drives are replaced, the system rebuilds the drives from the system memory image.

Use the following steps to replace bad disk drives:

1.Verify that disk synchronization is not in progress. If one is in progress, then wait for the synchronization to complete before continuing.

2.Slide the hard disk eject latch to the right.

3.Remove the hard disk by pulling squarely on the handle.

4.Insert new hard disk squarely into the available slot. Ensure the disk drive is completely inserted into the system and flush with the chassis.

Warning:

The system erases any pre-existing data on hard disk drives inserted into the RamSan-325 while the system is running.

Important:

TMS does not advise removing functional hard disks. While the action should be perfectly safe, it may affect system performance or downtime, depending on the system mode, as the system synchronizes the new disk drive.

RamSan-325/325c User’s Manual - 100 -