4.8 Adding and Deleting Spare Drive Assignments
You can assign spare drives to a logical drive to serve as backups for failed drives. In the event of a drive failure, the spare drive will be automatically configured into the array and reconstruction (or rebuilding) will immediately commence.
Logical drives can support multiple spare drives; this configuration however is rarely used due to its high cost and uncommon occurrences of drive failures. A practical configuration calls for one spare drive per logical drive - after rebuilding on this drive, just replace the failed drive and then configure the replacement as the new spare drive of the logical drive.
NOTE:
Adding a spare drive can be done automatically by selecting the RAID 1+Spare, RAID 3+Spare or RAID 5+Spare option from the logical drive RAID Level selection dialog box when creating a logical drive. These options apply to RAID 1, RAID 3, and RAID 5 levels respectively.
Assigning a spare drive
1. Display the Logical Drives window by clicking on the Logical View command button in the introduction or selecting Logical View from the RAID View navigation panel.
2. Choose the logical drive where you would like to assign a spare drive. Choose the Operation tab and the Spare sub-tab. If the Spare sub-tab does not appear, there are no drives available to serve as spares.
3. Under the Add tab, if there are drives available to assign as spares, their channels will be listed under Available. Choose the drive icon for the drive that will become the new spare.
4. Click the Add button, then click either Local or Global. Local spares will only replace failed drives in the same logical drive. Global spares will replace any drive that fails in any logical drive on the RAID controller.
NOTE:
Spare drive assignments can also be made when scanning in new drives under Physical View.
Deleting a spare drive assignment
1. Display the Logical Drives window by clicking on the Logical View command button in the introduction or selecting Logical View from the RAID View navigation panel.
2. Choose the logical drive where you would like to delete an existing spare drive assignment. Choose the Operation tab and the Spare sub-tab.
3. Under the Delete tab, if there are drives assigned as spares, their icons will be displayed under Spare Drives. The upper window under Spare Drives lists Local Spares. The lower window lists Global Spares. Choose the drive icon for the drive that you want to delete and click Add.
4. Spare drives to delete will be added to the Selected window. Once all of the spare drives you want to delete are listed, click Delete. You will be prompted for a password. Enter it and click OK. All selected spare drives will return to normal status.