Server 2003 not allowing me to hot-swap sata drives.

[Deaks]

This is my first MS server install. Bought an off-the-shelf HP box, added a SATA card and set it up for backing up huge areas of resources etc...

I've got 6x 500Gb SATA drives that I'm hot-swapping but I'm starting to find that when I put back in one of the drives I've already used the server won't let me access it.

I put the drive in, go to Computer Management and Disk Management and the drive shows up as "foreign". Go to import it and that fails with a error in the system logs that "a disk group with the specified name already exists".

Am I doing something wrong as I've done the same thing in XP at home no problem?

[SYNACK]

Have you safe removed the drives when you take them out as if Windows is handleing it it may get stroppy.

[Deaks]

Thanks but being very careful about that.

Having googled a bit I think it may simply be that I made them dynamic drives when I should have left them as basic. Experimenting now.

[localzuk]

It depends on the SATA card and the drivers I believe - does the SATA card you've bought say specifically that SATA hot swap is supported?

[Deaks]

Yep, I added the hot-swap sata card becuase the mobo didn't support it.

[srochford]

Pretty sure it should work. When you go into disc management, does it show a disc as "missing"? if so, I think there's a right click option something like "reactivate" which should bring it back - I've had this happen with USB drives before and although it's not the same it might be a similar issue.

Dynamic disc should work (you can get problems moving them to other machines but the same machine should be fine) but basic discs might be easier. I don't think you're doing anything which needs it to be dynamic so it's probably worth a try with basic.