Managing disks

The Manage Disks page displays information about the storage system disks, including type (parity, data, or hot spare), size, and aggregate assignment (if applicable). To filter the list to show only spare, broken, zeroing, or reconstructing disks, go to the pull-down menu, select the category of disks you want to view, then click View.

This procedure enables you to remove a disk from the file system. You would remove a disk for the following reasons:

It is a failed disk. You cannot use this disk again.
It is a hot spare and you want to use it elsewhere.
It is a data disk, is producing excessive error messages, and is about to fail. You cannot use this disk again.

Note: You cannot shrink the number of disks in a file system by removing data disks. The only way to reduce the number of data disks in a file system is to copy the data and transfer it to a new file system that has fewer data disks.

To remove a disk, complete the following steps.

Select the check box next to the disk you want to remove.
Click Remove.

Result: The following message is displayed:

Remove selected spare disks?
To remove the disk, click OK.

Result: The following message is displayed after the screen refreshes:

Disk <diskID> marked 'broken':

Removal and unload of disk <diskID> has been initiated.

You will be notified via the system log when unload is complete.

You can fail a disk from the file system if it failed to operate correctly, or if it is a data disk producing excessive error messages and about to fail. You cannot use this disk again.

To fail a disk, complete the following steps:

Determine which drive is failing or causing the excessive error messages and find it in the list of drives by its disk ID.
Select the check box next to the disk you want to fail.
Click Fail under the Operations heading.
Result: The following message is displayed:

Fail selected data/parity disks?
To fail the disk, click OK.
Remove the disk from the disk shelf.