Replacing non-failed drives in a 9265-8i array

[sinisterDei]

So, I've got a 9265-8i running Windows with 12x 3TB drives in a RAID 6 array. All drives are online.

TWO of the drives are ST3000DM001 model drives, known to be highly failure prone over time.

I have in my possession two replacement drives, HGST 3TB units.

Is there a 'safer' method to replacing these drives in the array than simply yanking them one at a time and allowing a rebuild?

 

[Blue Fox]

Need the array to stay up? If not, could shut down your server and clone the drives. At least that's what I have done in the past.

 

[Master_shake_]

You could do a drive by drive rebuild but that might bring the whole thing down.

Do you have any kind of back up?

 

[sinisterDei]

Yeah I've got all the data elsewhere. It'd just make me feel stupid if I voluntarily caused a rebuild failure

 

[Master_shake_]

Yeah I've got all the data elsewhere. It'd just make me feel stupid if I voluntarily caused a rebuild failure

That's what someone from the showoff thread did when he replaced an entire set of drives.

One at a time.

Not sure how else to do it short of making a new vd with new drives and copying everything.

 

[sinisterDei]

Yeah. I was hoping there was maybe a function in MSM to transition a drive offline to a spare like our SAn can do. Instead of rebuilding from the array it can copy a live drive to a replacement and then swap them out .