On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Stephen Frost wrote:
>> I'm wondering if I can swap drives from the dead box to the working one to
>> conclude if I've got a broken controller, or broken drives.
(Umm, I think the answer is obvious.)
> Hrm, personally I'd be *very* careful when mucking w/ your config in
>a hardware raid controller at all. I'd suggest you back up *all* your data
>before doing anything, and give yourself a fair bit of time in case something
>goes wrong. I have no idea how the Mylex handles these things, but I've
>found it's pretty easy to wipe the config on a MegaRAID if you're not careful,
>and I didn't spot an easy way to fix it, luckily I had backups. :)
Mylex controllers are abnormal in this respect. Most other RAID hardware
I've ever used has a very distructive configuration -- erase the config
erases the virtual drive. Mylex doesn't appear to do that. I've erased the
configuration, moved a few drive around, setup a different configuration
and ran with it for days and then returned the unused drives back to an
array and all the data was still intact. (3 disk RAID-5 array; the other 3
disks were actively being mucked with.)
I was very surprised with that behavior. I still advocate backing things
up.
--Ricky
