adding/removing HDD

[theone]

Can I add or remove a HDD without shutting of the server?

From the Wiki and FAQs it says it should be shutdown. If so then what good is the HOTSWAP bays?

 

[BRiT]

As has been discussed many times before ... use the search function to find those discussions on it.

 

Brief points:

Hotswap bays are good for non-array drives or 'warm spares' and that is if and only if the controller and driver supports it. They are good for easily replacing failed drives without having to tear apart the server. You need to take special care when adding drives on a running system, as it may reorder the drives which can possibly disorient unRAID.

[Rajahal]

Hot Swap bays are a matter of convenience - no screws, and no need to open the case when replacing/adding/upgrading drives.  unRAID does not support hot swap natively, but some hardware controllers do.

[Joe L.]

Hot Swap bays are a matter of convenience - no screws, and no need to open the case when replacing/adding/upgrading drives.  unRAID does not support hot swap natively, but some hardware controllers do.

Adding to that, the use of a hot-swap bay on an assigned drive in the arraya while the server is not Stopped WILL cause all kinds of problems, even if your hardware is hot-swap capable, the software managing the drives assigned in the array is not.  If you pull the disks, it will assume they failed.  If you pull more than one, you may lose data as there is no easy way to get the array back online without command line commands. and you better get them right the first time.

 

At least one user had all kinds of problems when their disk controller swapped device assignments on them in a hot-swap attempt while the array was online.  I think I remember that they lost data as a data drive ended up in the parity role.

 

The drive trays in hot-swap bays are convenient, but in no way are they needed if you upgraded infrequently.