[CentOS] Replacement tape drive configuration

CentOS 4.8

Hi All:

We recently had a Sony SDX-500V tape drive fail on one of our servers running CentOS 4.8. I have now replaced it with a spare SDX-500C. The problem that I am having now is that the failed drive had ceased responding to SCSI commands and we have since rebooted the system which resulted in the tape drive being removed from our current hardware configuration and the system does not recognize the new tape drive.

I know that I can just reboot the system and kudzu will add the tape drive back in during the boot process however I was wondering if it would be possible to manually run kudzu to add the drive or am I just "borrowing trouble" by trying to do this?

TIA

Regards, Hugh