I have a Raid 5 array made up of three HP brand 10k rpm SAS-6G drives with 146 gb size. One of the drives is telling me from its LED that it needs replacement. When I ordered a replacement I found that it was the last one in stock and my drive is discontinued now.
My question involves what would happen if I bought a larger sized disk of another brand? I would hope that I could throw in another larger drive and the array controller would partition it up to the original disks size and just waste the extra? Is that what will happen?
I also read that it is not wise to mix your array with different manufacturers components. Is this the same case when you use the same manufacturer but end up using a larger sized drive?
I’ve not had a drive go out on me in the past so I wanted to ask here before I started playing with equipment. I was lucky there was a HP brand replacement.
Is your server less than 3 years-old? If so, you should be able to resolve this through HP warranty. Your server’s standard warranty covers internal disks. If not, the part you need, HP Part #507125-B21, is readily and easily available. Do the right thing and replace with the like-part. These are stockpiled in parts warehouses and can also be found on eBay.
However, you should know that when HP doesn’t have the exact part available as a spare for repair, they will substitute a larger drive (like a 300GB 10k disk). It works fine.
Also, HP sources parts from multiple manufacturers; Seagate, Western Digital, etc. It’s really about matching the “Spare Part #”. Manufacturer doesn’t matter.
Check more discussion of this question.
