[CentOS] [HW] Do the HDD cages in rack mount chassis indicate visual/audio HDD failure?

[Karanbir Singh]

On 10/18/2011 04:11 PM, Arun Khan wrote:
> You mean, it is not OK to pull out a "functioning" disk?  Pulling one
> disk out of RAID 5 should be OK.  Am I missing something?

grab yourself a bunch of usb keys +  a usb hub - fire up mdadm on your
laptop and use those keys as target disks and see how things work with
mdadm and hotswap. Much fun to be had there. I would also recommend
using CentOS6.

Pulling a disk that isnt set bad and deactivated in mdadm can cause some
very funky results - best of all, the machine will freeze and you can
reinsert the disk boot up and carry on. Worst of all, you will lose all
the data on the array.

btw, dont think that these issues dont affect hardware raid - they do.
its just that the management for these things is slightly more
abstracted away and the controllers are better integrated with the disk
cages.

- KB