Physically moving or switching places of disks that are already in the pool

[cryodream]

So I had extremely bad luck the past couple of months - 6 drives died in as many as 8 weeks. I have bought 6 new drives and gonna add them to the pool. But what I would also like to do, is to move or swap places of some of the already existing drives. I mean I have 4 backplanes with 16 drive slots each connected to my sever (4x Rackable SE3016 connected via 4x SAS SFF-8088 cables to LSI  9201-16e HBA). Basically, I want to "rearrange" the drives in the backplanes, instead of putting the new drives in the "holes" where the dead drives were, I would reshuffle the drives and connect the new drives in the same backplane. It's probably a little bit OCD, but I like the drives to be "sorted", then it's easier to keep track of all of them. It gets confusing sometimes when you got a shitload of drives.

 

I figured I'd ask before doing. I use Stablebit's both Scanner and Drivepool. I have some folders duplicated (2x).

1.  Will there be problems if I'll shuffle the drives around in the backplanes? I mean will Drivepool and Scanner be ok with this?
2. Will Drivepool see and restore the pool auto-magically?
3. Will Scanner have problems recognizing and retaining the scanned status if the drives have moved? I mean Scanner just re-scanned most of the drives this week.
4. Should I do it in 2 stages? I mean, 1st reshuffle the old drives, start windows and let the DP and Scanner do it's thing. And only then shutdown and connect the new drives? To minimize confusion, so to speak...

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

First, I'm sorry to hear about the drive issues. Been there, done that (ST3000DM001's .... 12 of them failed in about a six month period.... all "shelled" drives and all outside of the warranty period). 

 

 

There should be absolutely no issue with doing so. 

 

As long as the drives are passed through, they should appear in Windows just fine, and be picked up both StableBit Scanner and StableBit DrivePool just fine.

 

 

As for organization, you need to check out a couple of things:

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

This way, you can mount the drives to folders, to make it easier to sort and organize (and you can access the drives directly, if needed).

 

After that, is StableBit Scanner:

http://stablebit.com/Support/Scanner/2.X/Manual?Section=Disk%20Settings

 

The "Disk Settings" section lets you specify a case and bay. THis shows up in StableBit Scanner (and you can group by case, and show the drive bay listed).

Additionally, this information will show up in both StableBit DrivePool and StableBit Scanner reports, making it much easier to identify drives. 

[Slayer]

If the disk is detected by OS it works like a charm, I have 3 5xSATA backplanes and it works perfect. Once I install new OS in a new system disk, and install drivepool, later i shutdown computer, fill in all bays and star server. Once it starts the drivepool was detected and working perfect, no any change needed. (Using same drivepool version).

[cryodream]

Thanks, Slayer. I guess I'll try it out and see what happens.

 

I hope scanner can recognize that it is the same drives as before, just different slots.

[cryodream]

Christopher, thank you for answers.

 

Very happy to hear, that I can safely re-shuffle the drives.

 

Yep, I have my drives mounted to the folders on one of the SSDs (D:\Drives\...).

 

And thanks a lot for reminding me to use the case and bay names in the disk settings in the Scanner. That'll make this way easier. Awesome.

 

Thanks again.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome.

 

And yeah, I've "reshuffled" my drives a few times. Different controllers, even. So, it should definitely not be a problem, as long as your controller isn't doing anything weird (and you said it is a "recent" LSI card, so you should be good).

 

And yeah, the case and bay settings are a real lifesaver.  And sorting by case, makes it really easy to sort the drives.

[cryodream]

Just an update:

 

Reshuffled the drives in the backplanes. 17 drives have moved or switched places.

Drivepool remeasured after restart and everything is peachy.

Scanner also recognized all the drives and the looking at the last scan history for al the drives, it seems they have been identified correctly, as they all have the scan history.

 

Awesome. Now all I need is for the drives to stop dying

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Glad to hear it!  Not that I didn't think it would. But it's nice to see confirmation.

 

 

And yeah, absolutely agree about the drives.  Even if they're under warranty, it still sucks.