Owner`s manual

PlatinumNAS Owner’s Manual

Hot Swappable Disk support

Your PlatinumNAS has a built in protection circuit to support replacement of disk drives

without having to shut down or reboot the RAID. In case of drive failure, the failed drive can

be removed from the PlatinumNAS and replaced with a new drive without disrupting dataflow

to the host computer.

Hot Spare Drives

A hot spare drive is an unused online available drive, which is ready for replacing a failed

disk drive. In a RAID level 1 or 5 RAID set, any unused online available drive installed but

not belonging to a RAID set can be defined as a hot spare drive. Hot spares permit you to

replace failed drives automatically without powering down your PlatinumNAS. When your

PlatinumNAS detects a drive failure, the system will automatically and transparently rebuild

using any available hot spare drive(s). The RAID set will be reconfigured and rebuilt in

background, while the RAID subsystem continues to handle system requests. During the

automatic rebuild process, system activity will continue as normal, but system performance

and fault tolerance will be affected.

Hot-Swap Disk Rebuild

A Hot-Swap function can be used to rebuild disk drives in arrays with data redundancy such

as RAID level 1(0+1), 3, and 5. If a hot spare is not available at time of drive failure, the failed

disk drive must be replaced with a new disk drive so that the data on the failed drive can

be rebuilt. If a hot spare is available, the rebuild starts automatically when a drive fails. The

RAID subsystem automatically and transparently rebuilds failed drives in the background with

user-definable rebuild rates. The RAID subsystem will automatically restart the system and

the rebuild if the system is shut down or powered off abnormally during a reconstruction

procedure condition. Please note that the system may no longer be fault tolerant during

degraded operation or the rebuild process- Fault tolerance will be lost until the damaged drive

is replaced and the rebuild operation is completed.

5-Understanding RAID