Hello all,

I am needing to replace four hard disks in a RAID array which I have been running for some time.

The original array is from Dell and it contains Maxtor Atlas V 10k 300GB drives with the following model number:
8D300J008495G

I was able to find drives online and matching documents with Maxtor (seagate) referencing this model number:
8D300J0

Now I recognize that the number listed on Maxtor's site is a subset of the full part number on my Dell OEM drives... Should I be concerned that the drives are not similar enough to swap? I can't seem to find any documentation on what the additional 6 characters mean... I was concerned that there might be a special firmware load. Or it might just be part of Dell's part numbers...

Does anyone have any insight into this?

Also, as a side note... I found this reference on Dell's support forums which has a firmware upgrade tool. Could running this firmware tool on the drives I am looking to purchase provide the proper firmware load?

Just a bit nervous... I have got backups, but downtime could be very painful.
Thanks in advance everyone!

-Cheers, Peter.

Links
-------
Replacement drive specs sheet
Dell website with the full model referenced

Anyone have any clues?

Any help is greatly appreciated...

Thanks!

that drive should match. But why are you swapping out the drives? If they are working then let them continue on. If it ain't broke... don't fix it

I am assuming you want to clone all four drives to the 4 new ones and then put the new ones back in.

Additionally, there shouldn't be any problem using a different brand and model of drive (and in fact that will be a much better solution since Maxtor doesn't even exist anymore)

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

You dont need to exchange raid drives like for like. Just size should not be smaller than the replaced drive.

We can only Assume you are running RAID 3 or 6 for best performance unless you they are just mirrored on RAID 1.
In case of all these any 1 drive drive that fails in your configuration should not cause problems with integrity and replacing the broken one and letting it reconstruct the array (few hours) is the best form of maintenance (and least amount of down time incurred)

If you want to avoid down time then i suggest setting up a redundant drive with the most critical data eg databases and redirect to the redundant drive while you do your maintenance on the raid.

Like cleanroom said- if its not broken dont fix it. But it does not hurt making more backups and fail safe devices!

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And why would assume that, and not raid 5?

Left out 0 because data is important not performance.

3 is most common

4 is like 3- but seldom used unless custom specified
5 is not recommend on this setup



Any way i dont know- im just speculating and a bit bored.. as pbrunner has not replied yet.
And as its most probably running on the built in raid on the dells MB's it usually 0,1,3

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Most dells With scsi drives that I have worked on are raid 5

Ah. SCSI...
We see what happens.

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The point being, without the proper info, we should not assume anything.

It may just be a US thing but the most common RAID array I see is 5 as well. With 4 drives I would have assumed Raid 5 or RAID 5 with a hot spare. Most common arrays I see are 1, 5, 10 and 50. In fact in all of our large clients we run 50, we can lose entire shelves of disk without data loss.

Hmm- just checked that quick. I though that raid 5 using 4 drives would mean if one died the whole array would bomb out. I was wrong. The minimum is 3- so one disk is spare.

SO raid 5 is possible. Too bad you didn't bet on that, Steve hehe.
Any way- we chatting here but the OP is not writing a thing....

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It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
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